Anuradha TK


Anuradha T.K. is a retired Indian scientist and project director of the Indian Space Research Organisation, specialized communication satellites. She has worked on the launches of the satellites GSAT-12 and GSAT-10. She is the senior most female scientist at ISRO, having joined the space agency in 1982, and also the first woman to become a satellite project director at ISRO.

Biography

Anuradha TK was born in Bangalore, Mysore State in 1960. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in electronics from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering in Bangalore. Unlike many of her classmates, she chose to stay in India to pursue her career.

Career

Anuradha TK is a Distinguished Scientist working as Director SATCOM, who was earlier Indian Geosat Programme Director at ISRO Satellite Centre. She works in the area of geo-synchronous satellites, which are crucial to telecom and data links. She has been a leading figure in several Indian space programs.
Anuradha's role was instrumental in developing and launching the ISRO communication satellite GSAT-12 satellite into space from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 15 July 2011. She supervised and headed the technical group of 20 engineers. As a part of an all-women research team, together with Pramoda Hedge and Anuradha Prakash, she manoeuvered the GSAT-12 into its final orbit from ISRO's Master Control Facility in Hassan.
After working with the GSAT-12, Anuradha TK led the launch of the much bigger communication satellite GSAT-10 in September 2012.
As the project director, she also oversaw the launch of the GSAT-9, GSAT-17 and GSAT-18 communication satellites. She has also served as Project Manager, Deputy Project Director and Associate Project Director for the Indian Remote Sensing and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System programs. Her specialty is satellite checkout systems which observe a satellite's performance once it is in space.

Awards