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Space Gen: Chandrayaan review: TVF’s gripping five-episode series traces the emotional journey from Chandrayaan 2’s failure to Chandrayaan 3’s historic success.
Fast-paced, emotionally stirring and quietly patriotic, Space Gen: Chandrayaan revisits India’s Moon missions through failure, resilience and human grit, making science feel deeply personal.
Space Gen: Chandryaan U
3.5/5
Starring: Nakuul Mehta, Shriya Saran, Danish Sait, Prakash Belawadi & Gopal Datt Director: Anant SinghPlatform: JioHotstar
Space Gen Chandrayaan Review: Fast-paced, stirring, resolutely patriotic, and quietly rousing, Space Gen: Chandrayaan once again reinforces why TVF has carved a niche for itself with grounded, emotionally nourishing storytelling. Unfolding across five taut episodes, the series pulses with a fervour that seeps in gradually, leaving you with a swelling sense of pride.
It is a salute to India’s scientific perseverance and to the unseen lives of those who labour through endless nights so the nation can inch closer to the stars. Directed by Anant Singh, the show chronicles the unseen emotional and institutional journey that led India to become the first country to land Chandrayaan 3 on the Moon’s South Pole.
The narrative opens on September 7, 2019, the day Chandrayaan 2 attempts its historic descent with the Vikram lander. Across continents, anticipation crackles in the air. News footage, anxious anchors, and rising tension build a charged atmosphere. Inside ISRO, we meet Rakesh Mohanty (Gopal Dutt), Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, brimming with confidence. In a light-hearted exchange with Sankaran Nair (Uday Mahesh), he remarks that once the mission succeeds, the first call from his new cellphone will go to the UN Security Council.
Elsewhere, Yamini Mudaliar (Shriya Saran), Project Director of Chandrayaan 2, patiently explains the mission to a group of schoolchildren, their curiosity mirroring the nation’s hope. The focus then shifts to Arjun Verma (Nakuul Mehta), a navigation systems expert racing against time to shield the Vikram lander from a foreign cyberattack, aided by Jairam Shetty (Danish Sait), hardware engineer for the Pragyan rover.
Stage one, the orbiting phase, is cleared. Arjun receives a message from his wife: Make your dad proud. The words linger, pulling the story into a childhood memory where a young Arjun makes a solemn promise to his father. Stage two, the rough braking phase with the Lunar Orbiter, also succeeds.
Mohanty’s PA arrives with two prepared speeches: one for triumph, one for defeat. Certain of success, Mohanty shreds the latter without hesitation. Phase three, the attitude hold phase, is successful. Stage four, fine braking, begins. As the lunar surface inches closer, suspense tightens its grip until contact with Vikram vanishes in an instant.
A white marble slips from Arjun’s hand, rolling beneath the desk like a silent premonition. The moment fractures into memory: a young Arjun standing before his father’s coffin, draped in the tricolour. His mother collapses in grief; he holds her, stunned into adulthood. The truth lands heavily: had America shared GPS technology, India might not have lost as many soldiers during the Kargil War. Major Vikram Verma (Rushad Rana) was one of them. India had been technologically outpaced.
Back in the present, the ISRO control room is paralysed, desperately attempting to re-establish contact, as the Prime Minister, bearing a resemblance to Narendra Modi, watches in grave silence. The PA returns with the success speech once more. Mohanty tears it again and instructs him to reconstruct the failure address.
The Prime Minister embraces Sankaran Nair, echoing the real-life moment when PM Modi hugged the ISRO chief. Mohanty, meanwhile, demands accountability. Yamini outlines the possibilities: a soft landing causing communication failure, a hard landing damaging onboard systems. Before she can list the third, Sudarshan Ramaiah (Prakash Belawadi), Director of ISRO’s Thiruvananthapuram Centre, cuts through with brutal clarity: a crash landing, Vikram is dead. Mohanty refuses to accept the finality of it, insisting Vikram must still be “alive”. Ramaiah reminds him that he had cautioned against rushing the landing. Arjun attempts to explain the cyber intrusion, but is shut down.
Shaken and disillusioned, Arjun vents his frustration on the cricket field with Jairam, only to be confronted by a journalist questioning his priorities while the mission teeters on collapse. Arjun responds sharply, reminding him of ISRO’s legacy and contribution. Mohanty pushes the team to salvage what they can.
Arjun immerses himself in the task, haunted by another memory: before leaving for Kargil, his father asked him to serve the nation not through warfare, but through science. He needed Arjun to become the finest scientist he could be. His father promised he’d return soon, and they’d clear Contra levels together.
Back in the present, Arjun devises a way to locate Vikram. Mohanty, rehearsing a subdued media address, is electrified by the news. He calls the press and announces the breakthrough, only for the moment to unravel mid-conference when a space enthusiast debunks the claim.
What ISRO found is not Vikram. Embarrassment engulfs Mohanty and the Chandrayaan 2 team. With the mission officially deemed a failure, Chandrayaan 3’s future appears precarious. Yet Mohanty orders a comprehensive failure report and appoints Sudarshan Ramaiah to head Chandrayaan 3, as Sankaran Nair prepares for retirement.
Ramaiah’s past comes into focus: a childhood scarred by discrimination, mockery, and systematic sidelining despite evident leadership qualities. Forced to the back of the classroom, he found strength in his father’s faith and a quiet resolve to become a space scientist. Now leading the inquiry, he questions Arjun relentlessly, even accusing him of being intoxicated during the mission’s critical phase.
Amid this turbulence, a space crisis unfolds. Satellite debris threatens multiple orbiting systems, including an ageing Indian satellite vital to the armed forces. Initially reluctant to involve Arjun, the team relents when the situation spirals. Abandoning a festive gathering, Arjun rushes back. Still burdened by Chandrayaan 2’s failure, panic claws at him, but he steadies himself and saves the satellite, earning praise from all quarters, including an Indian Army officer.
As he prepares to leave, he stumbles upon a file where his name has been struck off the Chandrayaan 3 team. Crushed, he calls Yamini to ask why. He submits his resignation and accompanies his wife, Madhvi (Amruta Khanvilkar), to a party. There, his old-time friend, Rohan Tamang (Meiyang Chang), a wealthy entrepreneur who has long tried to recruit him, offers a lucrative job and gives him a week to decide.
With resignation underway, money on the table, and a promise to his father still burning, what Arjun chooses, and what Chandrayaan 3 becomes with or without him, is what this five-episode series traces.
One of the best things about this Anant Singh directorial is its breakneck pacing. Even with a modest 30-minute runtime per episode, the succinct screenplay covers the many aspects of Chandrayaan 3’s glory without diluting character arcs and backstories. From episode one to five, the story keeps landing emotional highs and tense turns, leaving you on the edge despite knowing the outcome. It keeps you invested by making you root for its people.
The writing also ensures characters aren’t one-dimensional. Arjun is driven by his promise to his father, and the trauma of losing him in Kargil because of technological gaps gnaws at him from within. He’s vulnerable, faces panic attacks, and yet is desperate to make his father proud. His equation with his wife is a steadying force. Similarly, Ramaiah’s lifelong discrimination and the way he navigates the responsibility of Chandrayaan 3 make for compelling viewing.
What works in the series’ favour is its restraint. Rather than overstating its point, it allows the achievements of the scientists to speak for themselves, with each episode ending on a note of acknowledgement. The focus stays on the epic failure of Chandrayaan 2 and how ISRO rises from the ashes to make Chandrayaan 3 possible, in a new-age space race with countries like Russia, Israel, and the USA, despite budget constraints and a global pandemic, relying solely on India’s infrastructure. The Make in India initiative gets apt credit and naturally stirs patriotic fervour.
Rohan-Rohan’s background score adds gravitas to intense and emotional scenes. The cinematography and editing keep the show crisp and easy on the eyes. There are also cameos by Pratik Gandhi and Saurabh Dwivedi of Lallantop fame to look forward to.
The drawbacks: the makers could’ve elaborated more on other pivotal characters. Yamini Mudaliar and Jairam Shetty are vital to the narrative, yet their backstories are thin. The segue from Chandrayaan 2 to Chandrayaan 3 also feels rushed. And for a series about a mission of this scale, you don’t always get as much behind-the-scenes texture as you’d want. A slower burn, plus one additional episode to consolidate the transition and deepen Yamini and Jairam’s arcs, could have made Space Gen: Chandrayaan even stronger.
Performance-wise, Nakuul Mehta is phenomenal as Arjun Verma, handling the character’s emotional range with ease. Shriya Saran brings calm and composure as Yamini. Prakash Belawadi is stellar as Sudarshan Ramaiah, playing the part with conviction and brilliance. Gopal Dutt is commendable as Mohanty, oscillating between anger and support, while also adding comedic charm.
Danish Sait does a great job as Jairam, grounding Arjun through friendship while contributing meaningfully to the mission. Shreya Singh as Shaheen, Ankit Motghare as Mohanty’s PA, Rushad Rana as Major Vikram, Meiyang Chang as Rohan Tamang, Amruta Khanvilkar as Madhvi, Taba Reema as Tara Wangchu, Uday Mahesh as Sankaran Nair, and the rest of the cast play their parts well.
By the time the fifth episode ends, Space Gen: Chandrayaan leaves you with a particular kind of uplift: not the loud kind, but the earned kind, built from failure, humiliation, second chances, and stubborn competence. It is an inspiring watch, especially around Republic Day, designed to make you emotional, proud, and quietly grateful for the people who work through the night so a nation can look up and say, without exaggeration, we reached there. It is a solid addition to TVF’s roster, and even with its rushed patches, it lands where it aims: in that space between science and sentiment, where belief becomes fuel.
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January 23, 2026, 09:00 IST
