Yahoo – AFP,
Gulab Chand, 24 Sep 2014
 |
Staff from
the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) celebrate after the Mars
Orbiter
Spacecraft (MoM) successfully entered the Mars orbit, in Bangalore, on
September 24, 2014 (AFP Photo/Manjunath Kiran)
|
India won
Asia's race to Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft
successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit after a 10-month journey on a tiny
budget.
Scientists
at mission control let up a wild cheer as the gold-coloured craft manoeuvred
into the planet's orbit at 8:02am (0232 GMT) following a 660-million kilometre
(410-million mile) voyage.
"History
has been created. We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved
the near impossible," a jubilant Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the
Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) base near Bangalore.
 |
| Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) greets scientists after the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft (MoM) spacecraft successfully entered the Mars orbit, in Bangalore, on September 24, 2014 (AFP Photo) |
The success
of the mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the Red
Planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with its
Asian rivals for success in space.
India has
been trying to keep up with neighbouring giant China, which has poured billions
of dollars into its programme and plans to build a manned space station by the
end of the decade.
At just $74
million, the mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the
sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity". That figure also represents just a
fraction of the cost of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began
orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.
India now
joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of
reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in
failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.
 |
The
PSLV-C25 launch vehicle, carrying the Mars
Orbiter probe as its payload, lifts
off from the
Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota,
on November 5, 2013
(AFP Photo/Seshadri
Sukumar)
|
NASA
sends congratulations
Now
Mangalyaan has reached Mars, the probe is expected to study the planet's
surface and scan its atmosphere for methane, which could provide evidence of
some sort of life form.
Mangalyaan
is carrying a camera, an imaging spectrometer, a methane sensor and two other
scientific instruments.
NASA
congratulated India on its "Mars arrival", welcoming Mangalyaan,
which means Mars vehicle in Hindi, in a tweet to "the missions studying
the Red Planet".
Indian
engineers employed an unusual "slingshot" method for Mangalyaan's
interplanetary journey, which began when it blasted off from India's southern
spaceport on November 5 last year.
Lacking
enough rocket power to blast directly out of Earth's atmosphere and
gravitational pull, it orbited the Earth for several weeks while building up
enough velocity to break free.
Critics of
the programme say a country that struggles to feed its people adequately and
where roughly half have no toilets should not be splurging on space travel.
But
supporters say it is the perfect opportunity to showcase India's technological
prowess as well as a chance for some one-upmanship on its rival Asian
superpower.
"It's
a low-cost technology demonstration," said Pallava Bagla, who has written
a book on India's space programme.
 |
Visitors
look at a scale model of India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft, at the Nehru
Planetarium, as a special preview on the Mars Orbiter Mission, in Bangalore, on
September 23, 2014 (AFP Photo/Manjunath Kiran)
|
"The
rivalry between regional giants China and India exists in space too and this
gives India the opportunity to inch ahead of China (and capture more of the
market)," Bagla told AFP.
The
decision to launch the mission was announced in a speech an Independence Day
2012, shortly after China's attempt flopped when it failed to leave Earth's
atmosphere.
India has
so far launched 40 satellites for foreign nations, since kick-starting its
space programme five decades ago. But China launches bigger satellites.
ISRO
scientists said the Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM had "demonstrated and
proved" India's "technological capabilities" and showed it was
capable of venturing further.
"MOM
is a major step towards our future missions in inter-planetary space," a
beaming ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters.
The probe
is expected to circle Mars for six months, about 500 kilometres (310 miles)
from its surface. Its scientific instruments will collect information and send
it back to Earth.
 |
Indian
mission on Mars beams back first photos
|
Related Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment