S Nambi Narayanan, a mechanical engineer with a masters in chemical rocket propulsion from the Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Sciences at the Princeton University, was among the pioneers in Indian space science. After joining the space mission as a Technical Assistant (Design) in 1966, he led a team of Indian scientists to France in the 1970s to jointly develop the Vikas-Viking engine with the French. He was the Project Director for the second and fourth stages of the SLV, when he also served as the Deputy Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre at Thiruvananthapuram. He was the first Project Director for Cryogenic Propulsion Systems in the early 1990s. He retired as Director, Advanced Technology and Planning, ISRO, in 2001. Now living in Thiruvananthapuram with his wife, he has a son and a daughter. Journalist Arun Ram has covered an array of beats including politics, and science and technology, with several pieces of investigative journalism to his credit. The ISRO sp
