News Digest

India makes history with its successful maiden Mars mission

Just days after a NASA spacecraft reached the Red Planet, India has made history by successfully putting a satellite into orbit around Mars on its first attempt. Scientists broke into wild cheers Wednesday morning as the orbiter’s engines completed 24 minutes of burn time and maneuvered into its designated place around the red planet. The spacecraft is the size of a Tata Nano car, and lovingly called “Mangalyaan” or Mars Craft. The Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) described the mission as flawless. The success of India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, brings India into an elite club of Martian explorers that includes United States, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union. The geopolitics is significant too, as India is now ahead of China in the space race.

This is one domain in which we are at the international cutting edge. A domain in which we have pushed beyond mediocrity to achieve excellence.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was at the mission control centre in the southern city of Bangalore, said India had achieved the “near impossible”. The success rate of such complex missions is less than 50 per cent and even the U.S. and Russia did not succeed in their maiden attempts. “The odds were stacked against us. Of 51 missions attempted in world only 21 have succeeded. We have prevailed,” Modi said. Only the US, Europe and Russia have previously sent missions to Mars. The latest US satellite, Maven, arrived at Mars on Monday. MOM was conceptualised, planned and implemented by the ISRO on a shoestring budget of about $74 million. Perhaps the world’s cheapest inter-planetary mission, MOM was a tense, 15-month rollercoaster for the more than 500 engineers and scientists involved. The cost has surprised many across the world - by comparison, NASA’s MAVEN mission to Mars cost around $670 million.

The Hollywood movie Gravity cost more than our Mars mission - this is a great achievement.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi