India To Launch Mars Orbiter "Mangalyaan" Tuesday

sfcrazy writes "On Tuesday (Mangalwaar) the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) will launch the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The spaceship will take over 10 months to reach Mars and, if everything goes well, it would make India the first country to send a payload to Mars in its first attempt, and would beat close rival China whose recent mission failed."

Re:Great idea

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Awesome now that India has their poverty and corruption issues finally solved.

Just like all the other slightly-spacefaring nations?

Re:Great idea

[clarkkent09]

I agree in general but still sending a probe to Mars is a political stunt to show India is also coming up, not just China. There are million things India could be investing money into that would bring a better return in areas that you mention than this.

Re:Mighty big "IF"

[zorro-z]

Not to underestimate the difficulty of sending a payload to Mars, but they *do* have the combined 40+ years of US and USSR experience upon which to draw. When the US and USSR were putting people into orbit, landing them on the moon, sending probes to Mars, etc., it had literally never been done before. The mere fact that something has been done before- and that data collected during the attempt is available- gives the Indian Space Research Organisation an advantage that literally no country has had before it.

Again, this is not to minimise the challenge, which will be enormous. It's only to point out that they're not flying blind, so to speak.

Re:Great idea

[diskless]

It is also a marketing stunt. India's space program is one of the most cost effective in the world. By going all the way to Mars in its first shot, it demonstrates that its low cost program is also failure proof, successful and viable. ISRO, the organisation that is executing the Mars program, hopes to secure additional commercial satellite launching business by demonstrating the success of its Moon and Mars programs. Is NASA also a commercial entity, or is it entirely government funded? Can an African country walk up to NASA and have its own satellite launched at a fees? Just curious. ISRO is, and I guess that by getting more and more commercial business, it wants to reduce its dependence on government funding (and therefore political meddling). As we've seen in the case of the NASA budget cuts recently, living entirely on government dole doesn't always work in your favour. Or yeah, maybe that too. If you're running a space program in a poor country where a number of other programs vie for the same budget, then demonstrating science that captivates the minds of the populace sure would be important. That way when the budget discussion comes up, ISRO can say that the people want science too!