S. Somanath was named the Chairman of the Indian Department of Space on 14 January 2022.

Under his leadership, India successfully landed on the Moon’s surface on August 23, 2023, Chandrayaan-3, the country’s third lunar mission.

In his previous assignment, he was Director, of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre ( VSSC), the lead Centre responsible for Launch vehicle technology development. Prior to that, he was the Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at Valiamala, Thiruvananthapuram. He was the Associate Director (Projects) of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and also the Project Director of GSLV Mk-III Launch Vehicle. Under his leadership as the Project Director, the first Experimental flight of the LVM3-X/CARE mission was successfully accomplished on 18 December 2014.

He joined VSSC in 1985 and was a team leader for Integration of PSLV during the development phase. As Project Manager, PSLV he handled areas of mechanisms, pyro-technique systems, integration and satellite launch service management during PSLV continuation program till the launch of PSLV-C4.

He conceived and executed the first time launches of commercial mini satellites and developed small satellite mounting and separation systems which have successfully deployed many commercial satellites in PSLV.

He joined the GSLV Mk-III Project in 2003 in the initial phase itself and was the Deputy Project Director responsible for the overall design of the vehicle, mission design, structural design, and integration.

Somanath is an expert in the area of system engineering of launch vehicles. His contributions to PSLV and GSLV Mk-III were in their overall architecture, propulsion stages design, structural and structural dynamics designs, separation systems, vehicle integration and integration procedures development. He has been the Deputy Director of the ‘Structural Engineering Entity” at VSSC and also the Deputy Director of ‘The Propulsion and Space Ordnance Entity’ at VSSC till November 2014.

He did his B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from TKM College of Engineering, Kollam and Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore with specialization in Structures, Dynamics and Control.