India has successfully launched its first Mars orbiter named « Mangalyaan » on Tuesday. It is scheduled to arrive in the Red Planet by September 24 next year.
"NASA congratulates the ISRO on the successful launch of its Mars mission, which is its first planetary mission,” said a NASA spokesperson.
The Mangalyaan which means “Mars Craft” in Hindi language is the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) first Mars mission. The spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan told the Associated Press , "We want to use the first opportunity to put a spacecraft and orbit it around Mars, And, once it is there safely, then conduct a few meaningful experiments and energize the scientific community."
The U.S National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), according to faculty research associate Nick Schneider, shares the same research objectives with the ISRO. Schneider works at Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
One of NASA’s spokespersons said, "We look forward to the spacecraft's successful insertion into Mars' orbit and learning more about the red planet's atmosphere."
Aside from NASA, there are so far only two other space agencies which were able to successfully reach the Red Planet: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency.
The three space exploratory agencies all went through several several success stories as well as failed attempts of reaching Mars by spacecraft. Also, there were other countries that have tried to reach the Red Planet but had unsuccessful launches.
Japan’s Nozomi or Planet-B was launched in 1998 by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. Unfortunately, the spacecraft was unable to align with Mars’ orbit. China also attempted to launch an orbiter named Yinghuo-1. The China National Space Administration partnered with the Russian space agency for this endeavor, however the spacecraft was unable to head off from the Earth’s trajectory.
It is not an easy task to get a spacecraft like a satellite or space rover into the red planet’s orbit. As Schneider said, "A little more than half of the missions to Mars have failed.”It's a very challenging task, but we're all trying to beat the odds."
