Agencies/Bangalore
India’s first mission to Mars successfully crossed the half-way mark yesterday, four months after leaving on a voyage to the Red Planet scheduled to take 11 months, the space agency said.
“The spacecraft crossed the half-way mark today at 9.50am on its journey to Mars,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement from the southern city of Bangalore.
“The spacecraft and its five scientific instruments are in good health.”
The gold-coloured probe, the size of a small car, will aim to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form on the fourth planet from the Sun.
The country has never before attempted inter-planetary travel, and more than half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China’s in 2011 and Japan’s in 2003.
The low-cost Mars Orbiter Mission, known as “Mangalyaan” in India, was revealed in August 2012 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, shortly after China’s attempt flopped.
The timing and place of the announcement - in an Independence Day speech - led to speculation that India was seeking to make a point to its militarily and economically superior neighbour, despite denials from ISRO.
“In terms of radio distance, the 1,337kg Orbiter is cruising at 39mn km away from earth, travelling at 1.55km per second in the sun’s orbit,” the space agency said.
As a signal from earth to the spacecraft and back takes four minutes and 15 seconds, the high gain antennal onboard the spacecraft will be activated for handling communications with the ground stations. The spacecraft’s journey through space is being monitored from India’s deep space network at Bylalu, about 30km from Bangalore, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) of the US.
