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Through the Lens and the Lab
Capturing and Crafting a Launch
Speakers
Chandrayaan-3 through the eye, the engine, and the evolving story of India in space.
This panel revisits the launch of India’s latest moon mission as a moment layered with emotion, precision, and meaning. Together, the speakers reflect on the charged quiet before ignition, the collective anticipation that rippled across the country, and the lingering afterglow of watching India’s lunar craft arc into the sky. Their discussion moves between memory and machinery, image and insight, offering a textured account of an event that captivated over a billion people.
Photographer Dheeraj Khandelwal, spacecraft designer Susmita Mohanty, and space writer Jatan Mehta each bring a distinct vantage point: one rooted in capturing the moment, another in shaping the systems that make it possible, and a third in understanding its place in India’s expanding space narrative.
Their dialogue explores what it means to witness India reach for the Moon; how imagination, precision, and wonder shape both the images we hold and the futures we dare to design.
This event is a part of the photo-exhibition Footprints on the Moon. View the full exhibition schedule here.
In collaboration with:
Speakers
Dheeraj Khandelwal
Dheeraj Khandelwal is a Chennai-based fine art and documentary photographer whose practice bridges culture, nature, and emotion through evocative visual storytelling. A self-taught artist who shifted from engineering to photography in 2014, he explores human behaviour, environmental change, and cultural memory through images spanning sacred rituals, remote terrains, and intimate urban moments.
A Nikon Ambassador and artist with YellowKorner Gallery, Paris, his work has been exhibited internationally—from Times Square to Rome and Tokyo—and appears on 4,000+ airport displays across India. Selected for LIFE Magazine’s prestigious Showbook Collection, Dheeraj has collaborated with the Government of India, Nikon India, and leading art institutions.
Susmita Mohanty
Susmita Mohanty is a renaissance woman whose work and entrepreneurial career cuts across the realms of space, architecture, design, policy, diplomacy. Her work in reflects her multifaceted educational journey—she trained in engineering and product design in India, studied space sciences in France, and went on to co-found the crossover discipline of space architecture, in which she pursued a PhD in Sweden.
Susmita’s career began with NASA and Boeing before she turned entrepreneur – co-founding companies across three continents: MOONFRONT in San Francisco, LIQUIFER in Vienna, and EARTH2ORBIT in Bangalore. More recently, she has turned her attention to addressing global concerns of safety, security, and sustainability in space through dialogue and diplomacy through Spaceport SARABHAI, a forward-thinking space policy think-tank she founded.
Susmita is also deeply invested in fostering cross-disciplinary innovation. Together with her husband, Siddharth Das, she co-founded MAD Salon+Lab, a cultural platform that bridges art, science, and the humanities through collaborative projects.
Jatan Mehta
Jatan Mehta is a globally published space writer and journalist whose work bridges science communication, policy insight, and the expanding frontier of space exploration. He is the creator of Moon Monday, the world’s only publication dedicated exclusively to tracking lunar missions and technologies across nations, and Indian Space Progress, a monthly analysis of India’s fast-growing presence in the global space ecosystem. Jatan’s reporting is widely read and cited by researchers, mission teams, and industry leaders alike, reflecting his ability to distill complex scientific and technical developments into clear, compelling narratives. His work continues to inform public understanding of humanity’s return to the Moon and India’s role in shaping that future.
