India Put $74 Million Mangalyaan Into Mars Orbit on First Attempt, a First for Asia
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 15
India Put $74 Million Mangalyaan Into Mars Orbit on First Attempt, a First for Asia
2 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 15
Summary
At 7:17 a.m. IST on Sept. 24, 2014, Mangalyaan fired its main engine and entered Mars orbit, making India the first Asian nation there and the first country to succeed on its inaugural Mars mission.
The decisive risk sat in a 440-newton liquid apogee motor that had been idle for nearly 10 months; after a four-second test, it had to restart for the braking burn or the spacecraft would have flown past Mars.
PSLV-C25 could not send the 1,337-kilogram craft directly to Mars, so ISRO used a series of Earth-orbit-raising burns before trans-Mars injection—an economical approach that increased operational demands.
ISRO put the mission's realized cost at 450 crore rupees, about $74 million to $80 million, but the oft-cited comparison with the film Gravity obscures that Mangalyaan was a tightly scoped technology demonstrator with a 15-kilogram science payload.
Designed for six months, the orbiter operated for about eight years, returned more than 1,100 images and supported over 35 peer-reviewed papers before communication ended after an April 2022 eclipse.
Can India's celebrated low-cost model succeed again with its ambitious Mars lander mission planned for 2030?
Was Mangalyaan's famous low budget a triumph of innovation or a major sacrifice of scientific discovery?
Mangalyaan sparked a NASA partnership. How is the NISAR satellite now tackling India's biggest environmental challenges?
India’s Mangalyaan: 7.5 Years, $74 Million, and the Rise of Frugal Space Exploration
Overview
India's Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, operated for about seven and a half years, far beyond its planned life. Using five scientific instruments, it observed Martian landscapes and studied their composition, capturing the first photos of the far side of Mars' moon Deimos and enhancing knowledge of gases in the Martian exosphere. The mission generated a wealth of scientific data, leading to numerous research papers and a large dataset still being analyzed by scientists. Mangalyaan's achievements have advanced our understanding of Mars and established India as a key player in global space exploration.