Lift Off

Women hold up half the sky (and now space too)

- Smt. Sujatha Rao

The words “Lift off, we have a lift off” give me goose bumps every time I hear them, as I conjure up the image of the rocket zoom ahead into the sky leaving behind a ball of fire and falling debris. Along with the rocket, my spirits too lift off, as I trace its journey into the far-off skies on my TV.

I can imagine the excitement that must have been in the air as Apollo 11 lifted off with its now legendary crew. The background for that historic day was set in motion with Kennedy's speech to the congress on May 25, 1961 proclaiming the commitment to land a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out.

And history is witness to the fact that before a decade was out from that day, America realized that dream fifty-six years ago, on 19th July, 1969 with Apollo 11's successful mission which, to quote Neil Armstrong, turned out to be “one small step for man, but one great leap for mankind.”

The sixties held a pivotal moment in the history of space, which galvanized the entire world to explore space. Cut to 2024, we had our proud MOMent with our very own Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM as it was known in brief, wherein the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempted to go beyond the Earth for the very first time - a very ambitious mission from a developing country like India.