India reaches for Mars on prestige space mission

[Rick]

India reaches for Mars on prestige space mission

India began a countdown Sunday to the launch of its most ambitious and risky space mission to date, sending a probe to Mars which was conceived in just 15 months on a tiny budget.

After a recent Chinese attempt flopped, India is seeking to make a statement of its technological prowess by becoming the first Asian power to reach the Red Planet more than 200 million kilometres (124 million miles) away.

An unmanned probe, weighing 1.35 tonnes and about the size of a large refrigerator, will leave earth strapped to an Indian rocket which is set to blast off from the south-east coast on Tuesday afternoon.

More: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-india-mars-prestige-space-mission.html

[mickw]

Probably surveying for a new bt call centre