Sriharikota, AP | Aditya L1's flight towards the Sun on Saturday is the culmination of the hardwork of a number of people under its Project Director Nigar Shaji.

With 35 years of service in ISRO, Shaji has made illustrious contributions to the Indian Remote Sensing, communication and interplanetary satellite programmes at various responsibilities, sources in the space agency said.

She hails from Tamil Nadu's Tenkasi and joins a list of illustrious names from the state--Mayilsamy Annadurai, M Vanitha and P Veeramuthuvel, who have helmed the country's three lunar missions so far.

Shaji joined ISRO Satellite Centre in 1987.

She was also the Associate Project Director of Resourcesat-2A, which is the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite for National Resource Monitoring and management. She has authored several papers on image compression, system engineering among others.

Shaji hails from Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu, about 550 km from state capital Chennai.

She acquired her BE in electronics and communication from Madurai Kamaraj University and did her masters in Electronics from BIT Ranchi. She was also the Head of Satellite telemetry centre in ISRO, Bengaluru.

According to ISRO, the main payload of the Aditya-L1 mission is the Visible Line Emission Coronagraph (VELC), developed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.

At a function held on January 26, 2023, the payload was handed over to U R Rao Satellite Centre in the presence of ISRO Chairman S Somanath and Shaji.