India Becomes First Country In World To Place Aircraft In Mars' Orbit In First Attempt

At the time of MOM's orbital insertion, its signals took about 12 minutes and 28 seconds to travel to Earth for reception by NASA's Deep Space Network Stations in Canberra and Goldstone that relayed the data in real time to ISRO's station here.

The first sign of success in the final moments came when ISRO announced that burn of engines on India's Mars orbiter had been confirmed. "All engines of Mars orbiter are going strong. Burn confirmed," said ISRO signalling that history was in the making.

Igniting the main engine was critical as it had been lying in slumber for about 300 days and was woken up briefly for four seconds on Monday.

India's MOM is the cheapest inter-planetary mission. It cost about a tenth of NASA's Mars mission Maven that entered the Martian orbit on September 22.

The 1,350 kg spacecraft is equipped with five instruments including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas -- a possible sign of life, a colour camera and a thermal imaging spectrometer to map the surface and mineral wealth of the Red Planet.

US' NASA and its MAVEN team have congratulated ISRO on its Mars arrival, the Indian space agency said.

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