India arrives on Mars ?

After the failure of the Chinese attempt in 2011 , the country aims to be the first Asian to explore the red planet. They will use a satellite of 1.3 tons, with a total investment of $ s72.000.000

India began on Sunday the official countdown of his most ambitious space project : a trip to the "Red Planet" . It is scheduled for next Tuesday , and is launching a probe developed in a few months , on a shoestring budget .



After the failure in 2011 of China's first Mars mission , his great rival , India wants to enroll in interplanetary exploration history as the first Asian country to reach the red planet more than 200 million km from Earth.

Notably, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) will also launch the U.S. November 18 probe " Maven " a higher atmospheric layer of Mars in order to better understand the reasons for the disappearance of most part of its atmosphere.

India began on Sunday the official countdown of his most ambitious space project : a trip to the "Red Planet" . It is scheduled for next Tuesday , and is launching a probe developed in a few months , on a shoestring budget .

After the failure in 2011 of China's first Mars mission , his great rival , India wants to enroll in interplanetary exploration history as the first Asian country to reach the red planet more than 200 million km from Earth.


Notably, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) will also launch the U.S. November 18 probe " Maven " a higher atmospheric layer of Mars in order to better understand the reasons for the disappearance of most part of its atmosphere.

Upon arrival at the planet in 2012, NASA's Curiosity robot , a kind of small all-terrain vehicle equipped with ten instruments , was determined for the first time Mars was conducive to microbial life in its distant past , while rejecting the probability of a current presence of life.

Specifically , the Indian mission is to send to the Red Planet 1.3 tonne satellite , the Mars Orbiter , using a 350-ton rocket from the Sriharikota base in the Bay of Bengal , about 80 km northeast Chennai .

The probe is equipped with sensors to measure the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars , which credited the hypothesis of a primitive form in this planet that brought conditions similar to those on Earth .

" All are complex interplanetary missions . In the case of Mars , you have spent so far 51 missions in the world, 21 successful ," he told AFP news agency the head of the Indian Space Research Organization ( ISRO ), K. Radhakrishnan .

A success would be a source of great pride for this country of 1,200 million. In 2008 , India allowed a probe to detect the presence of water on the moon , 39 years after the U.S. feat of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. The Mars mission , launched in 2012 , it cost only 4,500 million rupees ( 72 million dollars, 54 million euros ), designed on the basis of " Jugaad " typically Indian first involves finding the least expensive solution possible.

The rocket that should propel the Mars Orbiter has a right power for your mission. ISRO engineers had the idea of ​​putting the probe rotated around the earth for a month to gain enough speed to escape the Earth's gravity . " Do not underestimate her because she's a cheap and pioneering mission ," says Indian science journalist Pallava Bagla . " Is Jugaad is innovation, and everyone looks today with low-cost missions ," he says .

The official countdown to the launch of the Indian probe , dubbed " Mangalyaan " ( Martian contraption in Hindi) by the local press , began at 06.08 local time on Sunday ( 01.08 GMT ), coinciding with the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali . The launch will take place on Tuesday at 14.38 ( 09.38 GMT )

Several countries launched space missions to Mars , especially the United States, Russia , Japan and China.

The Russian-Chinese mission failed in 2011 because the Russian probe Phobos -Grunt that was put into orbit around the Red Planet Yinghuo -1 Chinese satellite failed to take its path to Mars.

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