Article Posted on : - Nov 05, 2013

The PSLV C25 rocket lifts off with India's Mangalyaan from the Sriharikota space centre on Tuesday. An ISRO photo

SRIHARIKOTA (BNS): India on Tuesday achieved a landmark feat when its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) "Mangalyaan" successfully soared in the high skies to begin an odyssey towards the Red Planet.

The launch by ISRO's workhorse PSLV C-25 rocket made India enter into an elite club of nations which have sent spacecraft to the distant planet.

The historic mission took place at the scheduled time of 2.38 PM IST when the XL version of the PSLV rocket carrying the 1,350 kg MOM lifted off from the Sriharikota space centre in Andhra Pradesh, leaving behind a thick trail of smoke, television footage from state broadcaster Doordarshan showed.

The XL variant of the rocket was used to launch India's Chandrayaan-1 mission.

Tuesday's textbook launch was witnessed among others by US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman K Radhakrishnan and a host of senior scientists and other officials.

Until reporting, the solar panel deployement of the spacecraft had been succesfully completed and it had separated from the PSLV C25 rocket, as stated by ISRO in its Facebook page update.

Unlike other PSLV missions, PSLV C25 will take more than 40 minutes to inject the Mars Orbiter into Earth's orbit as it has a long coasting phase (1,700 seconds) for the launch and has to achieve an "argument" of perigee of 276.4 degrees.

After going around Earth for 20-25 days in an elliptical orbit (perigee of 250 km and apogee of 23,500 km), the Rs 450 crore MOM would begin a nine-month long voyage to Mars around 12.42 AM on December 1.

It is expected to reach the Red Planet's orbit by September 24, 2014 and look for the presence of methane - an indicator of life there.

The spacecraft is carrying five scientific instruments to study the Red Planet - Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS).

Tuesday's launch was the first-ever interplanetary mission by the premier space agency ISRO.

Other space agencies which have successfully sent missions to Mars include the European Space Agency, US's NASA and Russia's Roscosmos.


(With inputs from PTI)