The success of Chandrayaan-1 and the job starvation made one lakh youngsters apply for only 300 jobs at Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). "The unprecedented amount of applications may have been due to the current economic conditions," said V Jayaraman, Director of ISRO's Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency

"Many people who had left ISRO for IT organisations now wanted to return to the space agency," ISRO's chief spokesperson S Satish told The Economic Times. Jayaraman cited that from centers like Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai, the organization normally receives on average about 4,000 to 5,000 applications. But this year the figure from these places has shot up.

The glamour value was added from the moon mission, which prompted students of standard X and XI to apply for the jobs in a large scale. At present there were more than 1.35 lakh applications for a mere 300 openings in different categories at ISRO. "Among the applicants, about 70,000 students qualified for the entrance examination which was held on April 26. About 46,000 actually took the test," said Jayaraman