K. Sivan, the chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organization was born on  14 April 1957   in Mela Sarakkalvilai, near Nagercoil in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. The son of  Kailasavadivoo and Chellam, Sivan is popularly known as the  “Rocket Man”  for his significant contribution to the development of cryogenic engines, for India’s space programme. 

A student of local government schools in Tamil medium at Kanyakumari is now Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, who has been named the next Secretary of Space Department and Chairman of Space Commission and the Indian Space Research Organisation. 

Hailing from a very humble family of a farmer, Sivan,  the first graduate in the family” is a “self-made, studious and hard-working person.  He has graduated from the Madras Institute of Technology in aeronautical engineering in 1980 and completed a Master Of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering from IISC Bangalore. In 2006, he completed his Ph.D. in  Aerospace engineering from IIT, Bombay 

Before the elevation to the space agency’s top post, Sivan was the director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram, where he helped achieve some of the big successes in recent launches. 

For instance, he was the one who was instrumental in suggesting how to stack up 104  in a single mission, setting a world record on 14 February 2017. He was the key person who worked on the technicalities of how the satellites would be placed in orbit. He evolved novel strategies for launching India’s MARS mission endeavor through PSLV, ISRO’s workhorse rocket. 

Though Sivan isn’t much of a communicator he knows to connect with masses at the correct time. Growing up in a humble family, he appreciates thrift and feels that the low-cost launches and missions will bring ahead a great technological future for India.

For Sivan,  this successful life has witnessed many challenges and controversies. The first fight he encountered as a chairman was when the heat shield of the satellite got trapped within and failed to open, a problem which was never faced by a PSLV in  24 years. Being a workaholic, he was named as the “Sleepless Scientist”. 

Under his chairmanship, ISRO launched Chandrayaan 2, the second mission to the moon on July 22, 2019. If successful, India will only be the fourth country after the US, China, and the erstwhile USSR to make a successful landing on the lunar surface.

Sivan has numerous publications in various journals and is a fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Aeronautical Society and India and Systems Society of India