India Sets Foot On The Red planet

A cuboid space craft weighing just over a tonne has become the pride of Indian science. In 2014, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) launched Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM as it is popularly known and it became the first spacecraft ever to reach the Red Planet in its very first attempt and thus made history.

On September 24 this 1337 kg space probe happened to enter the orbit of mars at exactly 07:17:32 hours. Just minutes after it landed the probe took pictures of the planet which were later released to the world by Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India to the world.

This success was brought about at a budget of just 450 crore which is an achievement in itself. This successful mission has made the chairman of ISRO K Radhakrishnan one of the top 10 scientists of the world. This is regarding the list prepared by the prestigious science journal “Nature”.

This accomplishment was followed by GSLV Mk III which carried into space the human crew module. This is actually the first step that has been taken to use an indigenous spacecraft to put an Indian in space.

The dream of accomplishing a human space flight may still be far off but these successes has allowed the space agency to breathe easy considering all of the failed attempts that have been made before with the GSLV.

The space agency can now step into the newyear with a lot of pressure off of them. After a slew of failures for more than two years, they have finally managed to fly the GSLV, equipped with a cryogenic engine, successfully into space.