Do you know about Ritu Karidhal who visited Tirupati yesterday with small model of Chandrayaan 3? she plays important role in this mission

Ahead of the launch of India's third lunar mission, ISRO experts paid a visit to the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh yesterday. Do you know about Ritu Karidhal Srivastava, who visited the temple with a small model of Chandrayaan 3? Ritu is a woman scientist of ISRO who played an important role in this lunar mission. Ritu, the director of the Chandrayaan 3 mission, hails from Lucknow. She is also known as the Rocket Woman of India.

Ritu joined ISRO in November 1997. She worked as part of ISRO's Mangalyaan mission and was the deputy director of the Mars mission. She had also worked on many other prestigious projects of the ISRO. An Aerospace expert, Ritu had worked as Operations Director on some missions.

Ritu was very much interested in space exploration since childhood. She made it a hobby to collect news related to space activities of ISRO and the American space agency NASA. She earned her Master's Degree in Physics from Lucknow University in 1998 and her M.Tech from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The teachers there said that Ritu was the smartest student at Lucknow University. Ritu has published more than 20 papers including in international journals.

Ritu Karidhal has received several awards including the Young Scientist Award, ISRO Team Award, ASI Team Award, Aerospace Woman Award, and many more.

The launch of Chandrayaan 3 will take place today at 2.35 pm from Sriharikota. It will be launched on a GSLV Mark III (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle. Chandrayaan's rover is expected to land on the moon on the morning of August 24.