Remembering Sushant Singh Rajput: The Bihar boy who loved astronomy

Sushant’s penchant for science garnered more spotlight once the actor passed away on June 14, 2020. “Photon is a double slit” his bio read, which is rare of an actor in the film industry because most bios are aimed at marketing their personalities. Sushant was different. Despite dropping out of engineering college in Delhi (after securing an all India  rank 7 in the AIEEE examinations), Sushant never stopped chasing his passion for space science. He visited NASA in 2018 to train for his film Chanda Mama Door Ke. However, the film was never released. Little do people know that he was also a member of the International Lunar Land Registry (ILLR) for three years before being a piece of land on the far side of the moon which is called the ‘Mare Moscoviense’ or the dark side of the moon. He also bought a Meade 14” LX600 telescope in the year 2019. Sushant is also said to have had long discussions with black hole astrophysicist and LIGO scientist Dr Karan Jani. In a tweet shared by Dr Jani June 14, he wrote, “He (Sushant) took it as his mission to educate his fans about all the big discoveries. Our 2017 discovery of the neutron star collision was the closest to him. It was his dream to one day, visit the LIGO observatories in the US.” Referring to Sushant’s never ending interest in celestial happenings, Jani further had written, “Sushant took his telescope (LX600) to Chambal during the shoot of Sonchiriya, so he could better observe the nebulae.” In 2018, he had bought an expensive, Boeing 737 Fixed Base Flight Simulator too. January 21, 2021 would have been Sushant’s 35th birthday. As we await the final verdict on his death case, we hope he rests in peace where he is in the universe, where he belonged among the stars.