Article Posted on : - Nov 13, 2014

NEW DELHI (PTI): The second mission to Mars could be between 2018-2020, but may not be similar to the Orbiter Mission launched last year, ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan has said.

"MOM is not an end, but a beginining of our next scientific mission. The next mission to Mars may happen between 2018 to 2020. It may necessarily not be an Orbiter Mission like MOM. We need to get feedback from the scientific community on what kind of project would this be," he said.

The ISRO chief was speaking at a book launch of 'Reaching for the stars: India's journey to Mars and Beyond' authored by eminient science journalist Pallava Bagla and Subhadra Menon.

The entire team of senior ISRO scientists who had played a key role in the Mars Mission was present at the launch.

Kiran Kumar, Director, Space Applications Centre of ISRO said that the ISRO was "checking and cross checking" the data sent by MOM as it had to undergo through rigorous process of experiments to be accepeted by the world. "Science does not come easy. Observations needs to be validated," he said.

Radhakrishnan said that the next mission would also focus on Chandrayan 2- the Moon Mission- in which India will have a lander and a rover in three-year's time and Aditya, ISRO Sun Mission.

"In one year, we will also launch Astrosat satellite, a multiwave observatory," he said.

In an interaction with the scientists, S Arunan, Project Director, MOM said that while undertaking the mission, ISRO had studied failures of the mission undertaken by other countries. India is the first country to have achieved success in its first attempt.

"For some 2-3 months we studied from the failures of other countries who had undertaken the mission. So, we learnt from the failures of others. Risk was well mitigated in advance," he said.