Mr. P. Kunhikrishnan

Scientist ‘H’ and Deputy Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC)

Mr P Kunhikrishnan is the Scientist ‘H’ and Deputy Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). He has taken over as the Director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikot and took over as Director from Dr M Y S Prasad, who superannuated by end May 2015.

Mr Kunhikrishnan obtained his B-Tech degree in Electronics & Communication from College of Engineering, Trivandrum. He joined ISRO in the Systems Reliability Entity of VSSC in 1986. In his career spanning over three decades in ISRO, Mr Kunhikrishnan has made significant contributions in the area of System level Quality Assurance of Avionics, Electrical Integration and Checkout Systems for various Launch Vehicles of ISRO. He was responsible for the flight certification of all the Avionics Systems of Launch Vehicles as Head of the Quality Division for Devices and Test & Evaluation.

Mr Kunhikrishnan became the Associate Project Director of PSLV in February, 2009. He assumed charge as the Project Director of PSLV Project in June 2010 and has successfully accomplished 13 PSLV Missions as Mission Director. These include such significant missions like PSLV-C19 that carried RISAT-1, the heaviest Indian remote sensing satellite launched by PSLV to Sun Synchronous Orbit so far, PSLV-C21 and PSLV C23, two missions that successfully launched two French operational Earth Observation Satellites to intended orbits, PSLV-C25 that launched India’s Mars Orbiter Spacecraft and the four PSLV missions that launched first four satellites of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).

In February 2015, Mr Kunhikrishnan became Deputy Director of VSSC for Mechanisms, Vehicle Integration & Testing (MVIT) Entity. He is the recipient of Astronautical society of India (ASI) award for the year 2011 and ISRO Individual Merit Award for the year 2010.