NEW DELHI: The success of ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) on Wednesday made India the first Asian country to reach the red planet. With this, India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars.

Getting a spaceship successfully into orbit around Mars is no easy task. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.

No single nation had previously succeeded at its first go, although the European Space Agency, which represents a consortium of countries, did also pull it off at its first attempt.

India has been trying to keep up with neighbouring giant China, which has poured billions of dollars into its programme and plans to build a manned space station by the end of the decade.

Scientists described the final stages of the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, as flawless. The success marks a milestone for the space program in demonstrating that it can conduct complex missions and act as a global launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites.

India has a robust scientific and technical educational system that has produced millions of software programmers, engineers and doctors, propelling many into the middle class.

India has already conducted dozens of successful satellite launches, including sending up the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which discovered key evidence of water on the moon in 2008. And it plans new scientific missions, including putting a rover on the moon.

The Mars mission, as planned by ISRO, was a sophisticated exercise. Compared to other Mars missions, ISRO had a smaller rocket and payload. This reduced the cost (Rs 450 crore) significantly but increased the mission's complexity. Other Mars missions are not planned this way.

The launch was complex too. The PSLV rocket had a long coast of 25 minutes between the third and fourth stage, during which all engines were shut off. Once in orbit around the earth, the satellite had six orbit-raising manoeuvres that together lasted for 25 days before it left the earth's grasp.

As it goes around Mars on an elliptical orbit with the closest point around 420km and the farthest around 80,000km, MOM will employ five equipment that collectively weight 15kg to do scientific studies.

The Lyman alpha photometer would measure the relative abundance of deuterium and hydrogen in the upper Martian atmosphere to understand previous presence of water on the red planet.

A methane sensor will look for sources of the gas. While the Mars colour camera clicks away, a thermal infrared spectrometer will study heat emission, minerals and soil on Mars.

The Indian mission will be watched more closely, given that it's looking for methane, which could be proof of life. Nasa's 'Curiosity' was unable to detect methaneIt's yet another source of information. Mars is gradually unveiling its secrets to science and humanity, and the Indian mission is yet another means of unveiling this enigma that Mars presents," said space expert Roger Franzen, the technical program manager at the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

ET