Indian Prime Minister Formally Announces Mars Mission

neo12 writes in with the news that India plans on being the 6th country to launch a mission to mars. "Making the first formal announcement on the country's Mars mission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said India will send a mission to the Red Planet that will mark a huge step in the area of science and technology. 'Recently, the Cabinet has approved the Mars Orbiter Mission. Under this Mission, our spaceship will go near Mars and collect important scientific information,' he said addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of the 66th Independence Day."

Re:Thankfully

[Anonymous Coward]

1st world - US allied
2nd world - Soviet Union and China allied
3rd world - Non-allied

This is a Cold War term. The Cold War is over, so stop using it. Saying that the US is becoming a 2nd world country sounds ridiculously stupid to someone who understands what these terms actually mean (meaning that the US is becoming an ally with the Soviet Union and rejecting its alliances with NATO).

Re:Pool ressources

[neither_geek_nor_ner]

This is very interesting. Nobody says this to the US or European countries or Japan or China that you solve all your problems first before going in for scientific advancement. Even the richest of countries have the homeless and the destitute. The US should not go in for the Mars or Voyager or Pioneer missions as there still are some homeless people in New York? NASA's achievements are followed all over the World as the achievement of human-kind. Moreover, India is not a tin-pot dictatorship where things are done on the whims and fancies of the dictator. The middle-class in India is larger than the population of the whole of the US. They should not have any aspirations?

Re:All for $100 million ?

[neither_geek_nor_ner]

India spent $90 million to send a LRO (to the moon) as detailed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1 [wikipedia.org]. The US spent $583 million to do the same http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter [wikipedia.org]. Why do you think jobs are being shipped overseas from the US?

Re:All for $100 million ?

[GumphMaster]

Let's see, the United States, paying US rates for labour, managed to build, fly and land the Pathfinder on Mars for about $150 million ('92 dollars) in direct expenditure and spent about the same again running the mission. I think the Indians could conceivably an equivalent mission for less direct expenditure, but that is not a good measure of the peripheral expenditure and effort that would be required to obtain a similar knowledge and infrastructure base to that the US started from.

Are we focusing too much on Mars?

[interkin3tic]

Serious question, why does it seem that Mars is the only planet we're interested in? According to this wiki page [wikipedia.org], there have been numerous flybys, probes, and landings on mars, as well as two rovers. There have also been explorations of venus, though no rovers due to the heat, just two soviet landers. There have been flybys of Jupiter and explorations of jovian moons.

Saturn though, there have only been four flybys. Neptune and Uranus were only observed up close by Voyager 2. And there is a flyby planned for Pluto.
Why isn't there more interest in the further planets? Is it simply that it will take longer? Seems like the sheer number of explorations of Mars would make some of the further targets more interesting.

Re:Are we focusing too much on Mars?

[ColdWetDog]

It gets harder the further out you go. Less sunlight, less efficient solar power leading to use of nuclear isotopic power supplies. IIRC only the US and USSR have used nuc thermal supplies in space - although India does have an active nuclear energy research program and nucular weapons. Harder communications - India doesn't have world wide tracking systems.

India doesn't seem to have a clear path to space. Seems like their missions are scatter shot - one moon, then Mars, then whatever. Who knows what internal politics are going on? Mars also offers the chance to piggy back on US / ESO communication links although I have not heard they plan on doing that.

Besides, Mars is cool. Although in general, I agree. I'd love to see many more Jovian moon missions.