I'm in the Martian Orbit

India created history on Wednesday, becoming the first country to successfully get a spacecraft into the Martian orbit on its maiden attempt. It aims to study Mars' surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane with the help of scientific instruments.

Nicknamed 'Mangalyaan', the success of the Mars Orbiter Mission will boost India's five-decade-old space programme. The Mars Orbiter Mission is India's first interplanetary mission. It was launched on November 5, 2013 from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh with the powerful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) The mission and was executed in 15 months at a cost of Rs. 450 crore ($74 million), which is a  fraction of the $671 million that NASA of US spent.

As the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi said, our budget of sending Mangalyaan was lesser than the budget of a Hollywood movie. No doubt the Western world is flocking India to get all its work done. What started as a trickle with call centres, body shopping, Business Process Outsourcing has now turned into setting up R&D Centres, Manufacturing hubs, Satellite launches and other high end outsourcing.

India now joins a small club of nations — the U.S., Russia and those in the European Space Agency – to have mastered interplanetary travel, giving it bragging rights over Asian rivals China and Japan whose attempts to get to Mars failed.

Its indeed a proud moment for ISRO and Indian scientists. India has a very successful and reputed Space programme and made a name for itself in the comity of nations in the area of Satellite launches, mission to the Moon and now mission to the Moon. We have shown to the world that we are second to none when it comes to intelligence, science & technology afterall wasnt Aryabhatta from India, the first ancient scientist to explain the spherical rotation of the earth on its axis and also the lunar & solar eclipse.

As our Prime Minister said, its time that we start celebrating the success of this great momentous occasion and felicitate our Scientists and celebrate in the streets just like we do when India won the world cup. In fact this achievement is far bigger than our victories in cricket. So its time the frenzy nation, media & sponsors sit up and recoginise this achievement and honour & felicitate the ISRO scientists.

Modiji’s address to the ISRO scientist was inspiring and am sure will inspire the scientists and the citizens of India to scale up even further reach greater heights. Trust other politicians in the country will strengthen Modi’s hands to do so………. Only time will tell…….