From the Red Fort to the Red Planet: India's Mars Mission announced by PM

New Delhi: India is all set to visit distant Mars, riding on Mangalyaan. Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced India's maiden mission to the Red Planet from the ramparts of the Red Fort while addressing the nation on Independence Day. The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO is set to launch a small unmanned satellite to Mars as early as November next year which might join NASA's Curiosity rover in exploring the Red Planet. "Recently the Cabinet has approved the Mars Orbiter Mission. Under this Mission, our spaceship will go near Mars and collect important scientific information. This spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for us in the area of science and technology," Dr Singh said in his speech today. The Rs. 450-crore mission will be launched from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh using the work horse rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV, which has had 21 consecutively successful flights and also sent the moon probe. The journey from Earth to mars will take up to 11 months after which the Orbiter Spaceship will be placed in a highly elliptical orbit of 500 by 80,000 km around Mars. The over 1300-kg satellite will have a provision for carrying nearly 25 kg of scientific payloads on board, which will study the Martian atmosphere, possibly look for organic molecules to understand its geology and chemistry. Top ISRO officials say 'this is a technology demonstration project, a mission that will announce to the world India has the capability to reach as far away as Mars!' So some say this is now the start of an Asian space race to reach Mars since China's first mission failed and India seeks to beat it. In all, there have been about 40 missions to Mars with just about half of them being successful with attempts made by USA, Russia, France, Europe and China. The most recent of these was the NASA's Curiosity rover which reached Mars on August 6. From the Red Fort to the Red Planet, this ambitious mission that could well be the start of a new Asian space race. And with India and China racing to Mars, who will get there first?

This is great news .. The date seemed to be set to November 2013 .. More space race the better.. competition is allways good for science ..... I am damn excited for 2013 now ....

I wonder if India and China are starting this new space race in an attempt to deal with their gigantic populations.
What better way to relocate than to find them a new home off the planet. Long term solution of course cuz they can't really do it overnight...just a thought. This website is all about theories.

I'm just hoping whatever there is up there, if anything, that has been hidden won't be something all the nations are equally thrilled about staying quiet with. The more the merrier for feeling like what we see is the truth by sheer national rivalry if nothing else.

A lot could happen quick with some good hard competition going on. Great news.

I could have sworn that there are a large amount of people in India that are starving and living under very poor conditions.

Maybe Iam mistaken but couldnt the money be better spent?

Originally posted by lunchmanstan
I could have sworn that there are a large amount of people in India that are starving and living under very poor conditions.

Maybe Iam mistaken but couldnt the money be better spent?

You do realize that spending the money on starving,homeless,etc,etc would be 10 fold what these missions cost right? T

I accidentally came across this thread today. The total disrespect of some members toward India and its space program compels me to post this.

I see some members looking down at the indians as a bunch of barbarians who don't need a space program.

As for facts a simple search in wikipedia shows all the space agencies and their capabilites.

en.wikipedia.org...

Let the facts decide who is right!!


As for all the cry about India spending money of defense and space when it could be spend for a lot of other things.

To some extend you are right. India needs to develop on a wide range of issues and is doing a lot in that respect.
It also has to be noted that India spends just 2.5% of its GDP on Defense which is not a great deal considering we have long term problems with our two neighbors CHINA and PAKISTAN .


en.wikipedia.org...

Again a simple wikipedia search.

Considering the fact that India got its independence on 1947, the amount of development it has seen is actually commendable. There are not many countries that has developed in so many fields in such a short period.

As for the claims that India should not be 'thinking of rockets' when it has an unstable economy I can only look at your misinformed or ignorant minds and just smile. The Indian economy is currently one of the largest and most stable economy having a growth rate of close to 8% when the rest of the world is going bankrupt due to the financial meltdown.

en.wikipedia.org...


Again good ol' wikipedia.

When someone tells me India should concentrate more on the infrastructure and other amenities rather than Defense and Space, I tell them this:

Suppose India invest greatly on the above mentioned and practically nothing on Defense and space for the next ten years you might see a big jump in the quality of life of the people and the infrastructure; but there will be a big drop in the field of defense and space.

In case of any war with its neighboring nations, India with a crippled defense wont be able to defend itself and all the developments it made in other field in ten years will be taken back by 30 years or more. Recovering from that is not easy.


When a country is investing all its money on everything except space and defense, it might see a rapid development but in terms of defense capabilities it would be years behind the rest of the world.

It is not practical to think that, OKAY, lets develop the country first and will worry about the defense after it is fully developed. Things like that wont happen overnight.

IMHO all these developments have to go hand in hand and thats EXACTLY what the India is doing currently.


Cheers.