India prepares to launch spacecraft to Mars

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will lift off at 10:08 CET atop an Indian-built rocket from Sriharikota.

The spacecraft is set to travel for 300 days and should reach Mars orbit in September 2014, and if all goes well, India's space agency will become the fourth in the world after those of the US, Russia and Europe to undertake a successful Mars mission.

Some observers are viewing the launch of the MOM, also known by the informal name of Mangalyaan (Mars-craft), as the latest salvo in a burgeoning space race between the Asian powers of India, China, Japan, South Korea and others.

Prof Anew Coates, from the UK's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said that "the mission really brings India to the table of international space exploration. Interplanetary exploration is certainly not trivial to do, and [India] has found some interesting scientific niches to make some measurements in."

Those niche areas include searching for the signature of methane (CH4) in the Martian atmosphere, which has previously been detected from Martian orbit and telescopes on Earth. However, Nasa's Curiosity rover recently failed to find the gas in its measurements of atmospheric gases.

The spacecraft will also examine the rate of loss of atmospheric gases to outer space. This could provide insights into the planet's history; billions of years ago, the envelope of gases around Mars is thought to have been more substantial.

India approved the project in 2012, so mission scientists have worked around the clock to ready the craft in order to take advantage of a favourable alignment of the two planets that would allow the MOM to save on fuel during its journey to Mars.

The orbiter will be lofted on an evolved version of the Indian-developed Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, taking it into an elliptical orbit around Earth. It will then begin a series of six small engine burns to lift it to a higher orbit.

A final burn will send the craft off on an interplanetary trajectory, to begin its 300-day, 780-million km journey to the Red Planet. In order for the MOM to embark on the right trajectory, the mission must launch by 19 November and carry out its final orbital burn by 30 November.

The difficulty of visiting the Red Planet will not be lost on Indian officials; fewer than half the missions launched towards Mars have succeeded. But Prof Coates said that the planned mechanics for getting to Mars were on a sound footing, and that the probe stood a good chance as long as its engines fired correctly.

Some commentators have wondered whether India should be spending so much money on a scientific mission when the country has one of the highest rankings for childhood malnutrition in the world.

But those who defend such projects say the MOM is comparatively cheap and that the technological development required to mount this mission could indirectly benefit the country's other activities.