Indian space agency launches mission to mars

India has successfully launched a spacecraft hoping to make the 300 day journey to Mars.

This morning the Mars Orbiter Mission launched from the Satish Dhawan space centre after a 56 hour countdown to launch.

The craft known as the MOM or Mangalyaan (translates to Mars-craft) will, if all goes to plan orbit the Red Planet taking readings on its atmosphere.

These readings could tell us something about the planets history as Mars is thought to have once had a far stronger envelope of surrounding gas.

At (£45m), the mission is comparatively cheap, as instead of burning a very large amount of fuel to shoot the spacecraft to Mars the craft will instead fly in an elliptical orbit around earth using Earth’s gravity to build up velocity.

If the MOM successfully reaches mars India’s space programme will be the fourth to do so behind only the US, USSR and European space programmes.

Japan, China and Russia’s modern space programmes have all made the attempt but have yet to be successful.

There has been some speculation that the launch is the starting gun on an Asian space race between China and India.

The craft will orbit Earth’s atmosphere and must reach escape velocity before the 30 November in order to make use of the correct trajectory to Mars.