In Pictures

India’s Mars Mission

India marks success of its “staggeringly cheap” space mission to Mars’ orbit, which was reached one year ago.

Indian scientists and engineers of the Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO] monitor the Mars Orbiter Mission [MOM] at the tracking centre, ISTRAC [Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network], at the Mars Orbiter Mission in Bangalore. [Jagadeesh Nv/EPA]

24 Sep 2015

It has been a year since India’s space probe arrived into Mars’ orbit, making India the only country to have succeeded in reaching the Mars in its first attempt.

With the success of this mission, India secured a place in the elite global space club of Martian explorers.

Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, launched on November 5, 2013, from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, and journeyed 680 million kilometres and took 300 days to complete the course.

Mangalyaan has been successful in sending data and images during its assignment period of six months, which ended on March 24, 2015.

The scientific objective of the mission includes the exploration of Mars’ surface features, morphology, mineralogy and atmosphere by indigenous scientific instruments.

The Mars Orbiter Mission was achieved on a budget of $74m, nearly a tenth of the amount the US space agency NASA spent on sending the Maven spacecraft to Mars.

Before India, only Russia, the US and the European Space Agency have succeeded in sending spacecrafts to the red planet.

India is the first Asian nation to reach the red planet. [ISRO Handout/Al Jazeera]

India's mission has been budgeted at 4.5 billion rupees [$74m], which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap. ISRO's mission cost around 11 percent of NASA's mission to Mars. [ISRO handout/Al Jazeera]

Students pose in a group with banners featuring Mars and Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO] scientists as they celebrate India's Mars orbiter successfully entering the red planet's orbit, at a school in the southern Indian city of Chennai on September 24, 2014. [Babu/Reuters]

Space Pioneer award for the year 2015 was presented to the Indian Space Research Organisation [ISRO] by National Space Society [NSS] of the US in recognition of ISRO's efforts in accomplishing Mars Mission in its very first attempt. [ISRO Handout/Al Jazeera]

School students light firecrackers as they hold placards which read: 'India made history' and 'India's Mars mission successful'. [Amit Dave/Reuters]

The Orbiter Spacecraft successfully launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80km from Chennai on 5 November, 2013. [ISRO Handout/Al Jazeera]

Indian scientists and engineers of the Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO] celebrate after successfully putting the satellite Mars Orbiter Mission [MOM] Mangalyaan into orbit around Mars, at the tracking center in Bangalore. [EPA/JAGADEESH NV [Jagadeesh Nv/EPA]

An Indian man dances with a poster that reads: 'Congratulations on the success of Mangalyaan'. [Sanjeev Gupta/EPA]

India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] workers exchange sweets as they celebrate the successful entering of the Indian Mars Orbiter [Mangalyaan] into the Mars orbit on 24 September, 2014. [Sanjeev Gupta/EPA]

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