ISRO, the Indian space agency, confirmed that the Indian spacecraft Mangalyaan, officially called the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), has left Earth orbit and is now on a trajectory that will take it to Mars, where it’s expected to arrive in September 2014.

The Mangalyaan spacecraft was successfully launched on November 5, 2013 but only now has reached escape velocity, meaning it got fast enough to escape Earth’s gravity. It took almost a month because the technologies used for the MOM mission are basically those that India has been using for years to build and launch satellites.

For India, the MOM mission has scientific purposes but serves mainly to develop its own space technologies. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket used to launch the Mangalyaan spacecraft, as its name suggests, is the same one used for years to launch satellites. The spacecraft itself is in some ways a satellite like the meteorological ones used by India modified for the Mars mission.

For these reasons, the MOM mission has a relatively low cost, the equivalent of just over $70 million and the Mangalyaan spacecraft cost the equivalent of around $23 million. For comparison, NASA’s MAVEN mission has a budget almost ten times higher and not accidentally the rocket that launched the American space probe allowed it to achieve escape velocity very quickly, without so many maneuvers.

The Mangalyaan space probe is equipped with a propeller of limited power, just like that of a normal satellite that orbits the Earth. As a result, it took weeks to change its original orbit using the Earth itself as a gravitational slingshot gradually gaining speed and slowly moving away from it. On November 10, one of the maneuvers wasn’t completed as scheduled and on November 12 an additional maneuver has been carried out that brought the spacecraft into the planned orbit.

Yesterday, the Mangalyaan space probe has successfully accomplished the last propeller burn, which lasts about 25 minutes, which gave it the necessary push to insert it into the trajectory to Mars. For now it’s a success for India, which in this way has advertised more than ever its satellite launch services. The next critical moment will arrive in September 2014, when the spacecraft will reach Mars and will have to enter its orbit.

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