INDIA GOES TO PLANET MARS

India has launched its first inter-planetary mission in an attempt to become the only Asian country to reach the planet of Mars.

A rocket carrying a 1.35-tonne unmanned probe vehicle lifted off from the country's southern island of Sriharikota on Tuesday, where it began a 300-day, 780-million-km journey to study the Martian atmosphere.

"The biggest challenge will be precisely navigating the spacecraft to Mars," K Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO), said before the launch.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan [Mars Craft] in Hindi, was to first ride a rocket into an elliptical orbit around Earth. It was programmed to perform a series of technical manoeuvres and short burns to raise its orbit before propelling towards Mars.
The mission is India's first inter-planetary journey that requires developing technology to allow a probe to run autonomously.

Indian scientists sent a probe called Chandrayaan to the moon five years ago. The mission faced several challenges, including losing contact with controllers in 2009 and when a new, larger launch vehicle blew up after take-off in 2010.

Manmohan Singh, Indian prime minister, announced the Mars mission 15 months ago shortly after a Chinese attempt to reach the faraway planet failed to leave earth's atmosphere.
The timing of the announcement led to speculation that India was trying to compete with its neighbour, a charge that Indian officials have denied.

"We are in competition with ourselves in the areas that we have charted for ourselves," Radhakrishnan told AFP news agency last week. "Each country has its own priorities."

More than half of all attempted missions to Mars have failed, including a Chinese attempt in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.
Only the US, Russia and the European Union have successfully reached Mars to date.

The Indian project will cost Rs4.5bn ($73m), only a fraction of the cost of previous foreign missions.

One of the main goals of the Indian mission is to find evidence of methane gas on Mars, which would support the idea that the Red Planet can host primitive life forms.

A 2012 US exploration mission to Mars, known as Curiosity, disproved this theory when it discovered only trace elements of methane in the Martian atmosphere.

The US was the first country to successfully send a robotic explorer vehicle to Mars.
NASA will launch another Martian study probe on November 18.