India's success in putting a satellite into orbit round Mars on Tuesday is a remarkable testimony to the country's spirit of adventure, technological achievement and its shoestring space programme. The mission cost €58 million, the cheapest-ever successful interplanetary mission, a tenth of Nasa's current ongoing mission to the Red Planet, and even a full €20 million less than the Hollywood blockbuster Gravity. India, it seems, is now the Ryanair of space travel.
The Mars Orbiter Mission, or Mangalyaan – the Hindi word for “Mars-craft” – was the first maiden flight by any country to the planet that has succeeded. No mean feat: of the 51 attempts to reach it, only 21 have so far succeeded, and none before now on a first attempt.
India, joining the august company of Mars explorers the US, Russia and the EU, is the first Asian state to orbit or land on Mars, satisfyingly beating its strategic rival China, and representing as Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has boasted "a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation". The Indian Space Research Organisation has launched more than 50 satellites since 1975.
The modest 1,360kg spacecraft is now due to stay in an elliptical orbit around the planet for six months, sending back information about its weather and methane levels in its atmosphere.
Critics’ complaints that a poor “third world” country – a description that increasingly fails to do justice to thriving India – should not be embroiled in the prohibitive extravagance of space travel, or in the €250 billion global space industry, get short shrift in an understandably ecstatic India.
Its government defends the mission by pointing to its importance in providing hi-tech jobs for scientists and engineers, enhancing the country’s technological profile, and practical applications in solving problems on Earth. Not least, as the begrudging Economist magazine has admitted, India’s weather satellites helped reduce the number of deaths during cyclone Phailin last year.