Launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in November 2013, the spacecraft travelled for 298 days. Its main engine fired for about 24 minutes to slow it into orbit while the craft was out of radio contact behind Mars. The mission cost about $74 million, less than the budget of the Hollywood film Gravity, and India became the fourth space agency to reach Mars orbit. Designed to last six months, the orbiter kept working for about eight years.
ISRO had to work within tight limits. Its most reliable rocket, the PSLV, was not powerful enough to send the spacecraft directly to Mars, so the mission first circled Earth for about a month while engineers raised its orbit in a series of burns before sending it toward Mars on December 1, 2013. The main engine had been idle for ten months, and a test firing two days before arrival had to confirm it still worked.
In the early hours of September 24, 2014, Indian time, the engine fired. Because signals from Mars took more than 12 minutes to reach Earth, the entire sequence was pre-programmed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched at the mission control center in Bengaluru, where cheers broke out when confirmation arrived. "History has been created today," he said.
The orbiter carried five instruments, including a camera that produced full-disc images of Mars. ISRO lost contact with it in 2022 after a long eclipse drained its batteries. The mission's low cost became a matter of national pride and drew international attention to India's space program.
Key people: Narendra Modi, K. Radhakrishnan