Director of Ahmedabad based Satellite Applications Centre Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar has been appointed chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) for the next three years.

“The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the appointment of Kumar as Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, Space Commission on re-employment on contract basis, for a tenure of three years from the date of assumption of charge of the post,” said the Department of Personnel and Training.

Kumar will succeed K S Radhakrishnan, who retired on December 31 after steering the space agency for a successful Mars mission and launch of GSLV rockets. Shailesh Nayak, secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences was given the temporary charge of Isro chairman for a month.

By convention, Secretary, Department of Space is the Isro chairman as well as the Space Commission chairman. 

A 1971 graduate from National College, Bengaluru, Kiran Kumar obtained his masters degree in electronics from Bangalore University in 1973 and MTech in physical engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru in 1975.

After joining Isro in 1975, Kumar contributed to the design and development of several payloads ranging from Bhaskara (1979) to Chandrayaan-1 (2008) missions.

He was closely involved with the Mars mission too. He played a crucial role in realising sub-one metre resolution images using Cartosat-2 satellite, launched in 2007.

Over the years, Kumar made significant contributions in several areas in remote sensing, evolving the observation strategy encompassing, land, ocean atmospheric and planetary studies.

He is a fellow of National Academy of Engineers and corresponding member of International Academy of Astronautics.