'Gaganyaan', 'Chandrayaan' - what is the origin of these words?
If journalist Narayan Lakshman is to be believed, they are named in Hindi. In a tweet Lakshman sais, "Late question perhaps, but why are all these *national* missions named in #Hindi? Namo-bhai, there are Indians outside the cow belt too..."
Twitter however was having none of it. As many users pointed out, these words have their origins in Sanskrit and are similar to words in a whole host of other languages such as Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Assamese, Gujarati and more.
It only went downhill from there. Take a look at some of the tweets:
In other news, ISRO on Wednesday announced that the launch of country's third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3 may happen next year and said four from the Indian Air Force have been selected for the ambitious Gaganyaan programme, whose astronaut training would commence soon in Russia.
(With inputs from agencies)
