ROCKET WOMEN – DR.RITU KARIDHAL | top 30 future woman August special edition

ROCKET WOMEN – DR.RITU KARIDHAL | top 30 future woman August special edition

ritu Karidhal’s routine is pretty much like any working mother – she packs a tiffin box for her kids in the morning and is off to work. She comes home in the evening and helps them out with their homework. Pretty routine, we’d say, with just one exception. Ritu is an aerospace engineer and was a deputy director to the Mars Orbiter Mission or Mangalyaan, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation

What do you do?

Mission designer Ritu Karidhal led the design and development of this system. “It is like the human brain. It receives signals from sensors like your eyes, ears, nerve endings. If there is a problem anywhere in your body, your brain reacts immediately. That is what we had to build for the orbiter in ten months from scratch. We had to take each element —sensors, activators, motors—and understand how it may behave or misbehave.”

When Ritu first became interested in space she didn’t quite realize it would be so technical. Then again, she was only three years old. “I used to ask why the moon was growing bigger and smaller. I would look at the darkness and wonder what lay beyond it,” Ritu recalls. “I thought space science was just about astronomy, watching stars. In reality, it’s very technical work.”

Nineteen years ago, Ritu left her hometown of Lucknow, India and moved across the country to become a scientist. “It wasn’t an easy decision to make but my parents always supported me,” she says.

On launch day in November 2013, those dreams met reality as Ritu stared at the monitors in the mission control room. Her autonomous system was destined for the ultimate test.

How did you end up in such an offbeat, unconventional and interesting career?

Born and brought up in Lucknow, Ritu always knew she wanted to get into the ‘space sciences’, as she put it. She spent hours every day on the terrace, sometimes studying her books, sometimes studying the stars. “I have always had a fascination for mysteries of outer space, and knew that’s what I wanted to get into,” she said. “At that time, ISRO was my only option to get into that field, so I kept tabs on ISRO and their activities through the newspaper all through my childhood.”

Ritu grew up in a close-knit middle class family that placed a lot of emphasis on education. “We are two brothers and two sisters,” she began. “My father worked in defense services. My parents were my driving force though. We didn’t have too many resources and back then, we certainly didn’t have tuitions or coaching institutions. We had to be self-motivated to succeed.”

When the time came for Ritu to choose her field of calling, she knew without hesitation what it was to be. She cleared the GATE exam for admission into IISc for her Masters in Aerospace Engineering and from there it was but one step for admission into ISRO. “That was the best moment of my life – getting a call from ISRO. It was like everything I had before was all for that one moment.”

How was ISRO?

That was the year 1997, when more and more women were choosing to balance career and domestic life. Many had gradually begun foraying into fields that were traditionally a male bastion – space science was one too. But Ritu swears by the working ethos at ISRO. “There weren’t too many women in ISRO when I joined, I agree. But I was never treated differently because of my gender. Within the scientists community here, the only thing that matters is how much work you put in and what is the quality of your work.”

Mangalyaan came as a surprise to her. “We had just finished a project and suddenly without warning we were plunged headlong into the next one,” she said with a laugh. “But this was to be the most exciting project I had worked on so far.”

Mangalyaan or launch of a space craft to orbit planet Mars may be the most stellar space project done by ISRO. Not only did it make India the fourth country in the world to reach Mars, but it was done flat out in 10 months time and at far lesser cost to the taxpayers than anybody else – only 450 crores. There are scams and swindles in the country, which have amounted to atleast three times the cost of Mangalyaan.