India Ready To Launch Its Historic Mars Mission
November 5, 2013
The international space race is set to become more competitive as India will lift off its first mission to Mars on Tuesday. In a statement issued on Monday night, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said that a 44.4m tall PSLV C25 rocket, with the Mars Orbiter, named ‘Mangalyaan’, and other scientific equipment onboard, would leave for the red planet from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in southern Indian province of Andhra Pradesh at 2:38pm (local time) or 9:08am GMT.
The satellite will go around the Earth for 20-25 days and then, it will embark on a 300-day voyage to the Mars that is about 40,000,000,00km away from the Earth. It will reach the Mars’ orbit on September 21, 2014. The 1,350kg orbiter will carry five instruments to conduct a battery of remote-sensing experiments on the availability of methane on the red planet and in its upper atmosphere. It will also collect information about the planet’s surface features, mineralogy etc.