India won Asia’s race to Mars yesterday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet’s orbit after a 10-month journey on a tiny budget.
Scientists at mission control let out wild cheers and applause after the gold-colored craft fired its main engine and slipped into the planet’s orbit following a 660 million kilometer voyage.
“History has been created. We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible,” a jubilant Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) base near Bangalore.
Photo: Reuters
“The success of our space program is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation,” Modi said, grinning broadly and embracing the ISRO’s chairman.
The success of the mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with its Asian rivals for success in space.
Indians from ministers to students and office workers took to Twitter to express pride, with the Hindi slogan JaiHind, or “Hail India,” trending on the microblogging site.
“Emotional & proud day for ISRO & all Indians as we have achieved this feat in first attempt!” Bollywood director Madhur Bhandarkar tweeted.
India has been trying to keep up with neighboring giant China, which has poured billions of US dollars into its program and plans to build a manned space station by the end of the decade.
At just US$74 million, the mission’s cost is less than the estimated US$100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster Gravity.
It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA’s US$671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.
India now joins an elite club of the US, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure, including China’s in 2011 and Japan’s in 2003.
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