By Mubasshir Mushtaq
NEW DELHI
At 8:12 Wednesday morning, India became the first Asian country to put a satellite into Mars orbit after a 10-month journey from Earth.
India is the only nation to reach Mars on a maiden voyage.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who sat in the control room of Indian Space Research Organization in India's tech capital Bangalore observing the most crucial part of the journey, cheered as space scientists announced the successful entry into Martian orbit.
"History has been created today, we have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible," Modi, who wore a red bright jacket, told scientists at the research organization.
"I congratulate all ISRO scientists as well as all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion," Modi said, referring to the research organization by its initials.
"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and imagination. We have navigated our spacecraft through a route known to very few," he said, adding that Mars Orbiter mission was an "indigenous pan-Indian effort" whose cost was less than that of a "Hollywood movie."
The Mars Orbiter mission, which cost $71 million is the cheapest Mars mission in recent times, while NASA’s Maven mission, which entered Mars orbit late on Sunday, cost $671 million.
The orbiter’s entry into Mars was solely controlled by the research organisation although Indian space agency leaned significantly on NASA’s Deep Space Network to communicate with its satellite on Wednesday morning.
Twitter witnessed some humorous moments Wednesday morning as a twitter handle in the name of MOM was immediately created after it entered the Martian orbit.
NASA’s Curiosity was the first to tweet to Mars Orbiter twitter handle with a greeting, "Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India’s first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit."
"Howdy @MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch. I'll be around," the Mars orbiter replied.
The twitter exchange between NASA’s Curiosity and the orbiter delighted social media enthusiasts.
India is the first nation in the world to enter the Mars orbit since the Soviet Union, the U.S. and the European Space Agency.
Of total 51 missions to Mars, only 21 have been successful.
The first successful mission to Mars was led by NASA in 1971.
In 1999, Japan’s Nozomi Mars spacecraft failed in its bid to orbit the planet while in 2011, China’s Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter was destroyed when its carrier spacecraft -- Russia’s Phobos-Grunt -- failed to leave Earth's orbit.
India’s space research body becomes the world’s fourth space agency to achieve Martian feat.
Mars Orbiter Mission, India’s first inter-planetary satellite weighing 1,350 kilograms, was launched from an Indian-made Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on November 5, 2013.
On December 1, 2013, the orbiter left the Earth for a 10-month journey to the red planet.
The Mars Orbiter Mission program was unveiled barely two years ago by the then Indian Premier Manmohan Singh, shortly after China’s Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter was destroyed.
The closest distance between Mars and Earth is 35 million miles (56.4 million kilometers).
