[9][10] Somanath was born in a Malayali Nair family[11] as a child of V. Sreedhara Panicker, a Hindi teacher, and Thankamma at Thuravoor in Alappuzha district of Kerala.

[12] Somanath studied at St. Augustine's High School, Aroor, and completed the Pre-Degree course from Maharaja's College, Ernakulam.

[9] In June 2015, he took over as director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre at Valiamala, Thiruvananthapuram and served until January 2018.

Somanath earned his PhD from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras and was awarded his doctorate during the institute's 61st convocation on 19 July 2024.

[20] In 2014, S Somnath received performance excellence award for GSLV Mk-III realization from ISRO.

[1] In October 2024, he won the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) World Space Award at Milan, Italy, for the huge success of Chandrayaan-3 in 2023.