India Is Launching a Mission to Mars Tomorrow

With a launch planned for Tuesday, India is set to try to become the fourth space agency to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars.

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s Mars Orbiter Mission has passed all of its pre-launch tests and is scheduled to take off at 2:38 PM India Standard Time from Sriharikota, an island off India’s east coast. It’s set to spend about 300 days traveling to the planet.

Mars currently has three orbiters: the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, while the European Space Agency operates Mars Express. India’s MOM will seek to be the fourth.

It’s something of a quick development. Though India has been researching how to get to Mars for several years, the country didn’t announce its intentions to send an orbiter there until August of last year, just days after NASA successfully landed the Curiosity Rover. Still, the attempt has to be taken seriously: They’ve spent nearly $70 million on the project, and the country has become a major player in space in the last couple decades. It’s had a space program since 1969, and launched its first Soviet-built satellite in 1975. In 2008, the country became the fourth to successfully land a mission on the moon. The ISRO is also currently working on a human spaceflight program, though there’s no firm timetable on the launch.

It’s also got NASA support, which is crucial. Say what you want about the United States’ decline in space, but NASA still definitively owns Mars. Besides the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, NASA is the only agency to have done any real serious work orbiting or landing on Mars.

Since 1960, mankind has launched 40 missions that planned on doing a close flyby, orbiting, or landing on Mars—22 of them have failed, according to NASA. Of the 18 that have succeeded, NASA has launched 14 of them. Three Soviet “successes” managed to send back a grand total of 60 images and 20 seconds of data. ESA’s Mars Express has been awesome in the 10 years it’s been orbiting the planet. Besides ESA, Japan is the only other country that’s tried: It’s 1998 Nozomi orbiter had fuel issues before reaching the planet.

Despite the NASA support, if India succeeds, it’ll be because of their technology, not NASA’s. The Jet Propulsion Lab will supply communications and navigation support using the agency’s Deep Space Network, but MOM will be launched on PSLV-C25, an Indian rocket, using Indian research and development.

“This is a very complicated mission but we have the capability to do it,” K Radhakrishnan, ISRO chairman, told New Indian Express.

India is essentially sending the orbiter just to prove it can: According to ISRO, it’s primary objective is “to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission.” Still, it’s equipped to do some serious science. Its payload includes instruments to detect and understand the loss of water from the planet, measure methane, and detect the surface composition of Mars.

The country says if it doesn’t go to Mars on its own, no one else is going to help them in the future.

“If there is one planet that will be colonized in the next 100 or 500 years, or maybe even 1,000 years, it is Mars,” U.R. Rao, former chairman of the ISRO said in an interview last year. “At some point humans will decide to colonize the planet. Technology needs to be developed for our space program. Nobody will give us the technology for the exploration of planets.”