Another story of an ordinary person doing something extraordinary for society.
A teacher in Coimbatore is showing municipal school children that the sky is not the limit.
Sakthivel Palanisamy joined the Masakalipalayam school when it was struggling, with just 115 students and almost no facilities.
Teachers had to visit browsing centres even to print a single circular.
He raised funds, bought a printer, and began teaching robotics, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. The school now has internet, science equipment, an attendance system, an app for parents, and its own telescope.
Long after class, more than 100 students and their parents still wait in line to look at Saturn. In 2023 he took five students to watch the Chandrayaan 3 launch.Enrolment has risen from 115 to 650 in nine years.
Sakthivel, who grew up in a daily wage family and could not afford engineering, says that if these children learn to love the sky now, some of them may one day walk the corridors of ISRO as scientists.