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Satnews Daily
November 5th, 2013

India—On Its Way To Mars (Launch)



The launch of Mangalyaan, which means “Mars craft” in Hindi.
[SatNews] India launched its first mission to Mars on Tuesday at 02:38 p.m. (0908 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh.


The Mangalyaan spacecraft. Photo is courtesy of Pallava Bagla.
The spacecraft was carried onboard the indigenous PSLV-C25 rocket ,which injected it into Earth's orbit after 40 minutes from lift-off. The 350 ton launch vehicle will orbit Earth for nearly a month before picking up the necessary velocity to break free from Earth’s gravitational pull.

The Rs 430-crore project, informally known as "Mangalyaan," was approved on August 3, 2012, and the Indian Space Research Organisation immediately jumped into action to create India’s first interplanetary spacecraft.

"I am extremely happy to announce PSLV-C25 placed Mars Orbiter spacecraft very precisely in elliptical orbit around Earth. Now it will be a complex mission to take the Mars Orbiter from the Earth's orbit to Mars orbit," K. Radhakrishnan, ISRO chairman, said.

The Bangalore-based organization and its staff of 16,000 also share their rocket technology with the state-run defence body responsible for India's rapidly evolving missile program. Only three other space agencies that include NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos and the European Space Agency have achieved the feat of reaching Earth’s closest neighbor.

Some of the objectives of the mission are to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission and to also study the Martian surface and atmosphere using indigenous scientific instruments.

NASA, which will launch its own probe to study Mars on November 18, is helping ISRO with communications. The spacecraft is expected to reach Mars' orbit on September 14, 2014.