Overview
- He died Wednesday morning at his Pune residence following a heart attack, with last rites scheduled for the afternoon.
- A key architect of India’s early space programme, he helped steer INCOSPAR’s evolution into ISRO and led site surveys that chose Thumba and later Sriharikota for launches.
- He directed the 1975–76 Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, using NASA’s ATS-6 to beam educational programmes to about 2,400 villages across six states.
- He served as director of ISRO’s Space Applications Centre from 1981 to 1985 and received the Padma Bhushan in 1985.
- Beyond ISRO, he served on PTI’s board from 1983 to 2010 twice as chairman, helped establish Pune University’s EMRC, taught for decades, and obituaries note an unverified anecdote linking him to A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s early NASA training.