2013 India launched its first interplanetary spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission,

On 5 November 2013, India launched its first interplanetary spacecraft from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, reached Mars the following September, making India the first country to place a spacecraft in Martian orbit on its first attempt.

A journey that began in Earth orbit

The launch put Mangalyaan into orbit around Earth. Over the following weeks, the spacecraft fired its engine in a series of manoeuvres that progressively raised its orbit before it set course for Mars. The interplanetary leg took about 300 days.

On 24 September 2014, Mangalyaan fired its main engine and eight smaller thrusters to slow down enough for Martian gravity to capture it. The manoeuvre placed the spacecraft in an elongated orbit and demonstrated that the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, could navigate to another planet and execute a critical engine burn far from Earth.

A six-month mission that lasted nearly eight years

Mangalyaan carried five instruments to study the Martian surface and atmosphere. Its colour camera captured the entire disc of Mars in a single frame and photographed both of the planet’s moons, Phobos and Deimos. Researchers also used its images to study seasonal changes in ice cover near the Martian north pole.

ISRO designed the mission to last six months in orbit. Mangalyaan operated for nearly eight years before contact was lost following a prolonged eclipse in April 2022. ISRO concluded that the spacecraft had likely exhausted its propellant and could no longer orient itself to generate enough power.

What India proved

The long mission gave researchers time to observe Mars across different seasons and gave Indian engineers experience operating a spacecraft far beyond Earth. In 2015, when Mars passed behind the Sun as seen from Earth, Mangalyaan spent 35 days without contact with ground controllers. It managed that period on its own and resumed communications afterwards. The launch on 5 November marked the start of India’s first planetary expedition. That month of radio silence showed how much the spacecraft could do once it got there.

NewsHub Finance | History | 5 November 2026