India's first spacecraft bound for Mars is counting down toward a late October launch, a mission that — if successful — could make the country's space agency one of the elite few of space powers to have explored the Red Planet.
The Indian Space Research Organization's Mangalyaan spacecraft, or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) probe, has arrived at the country’s Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota to be put atop an already stacked and awaiting Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The spacecraft is designed to photograph the Martian surface from orbit and search for signs of methane in the planet's atmosphere, be it expelled by non-biological or microbial sources.
India's Mars orbiter launch window opens on Oct. 28 and closes on Nov. 19, with the arrival at the Red Planet targeted for September 2014. If all goes well, India would become the fourth country (or group of countries) to reach Mars, after the former Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.
Other countries have tried to reach Mars and failed. Japan's Nozomi Mars spacecraft failed in its bid to orbit the planet in 1999, while China's Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter was destroyed when its carrier spacecraft — Russia's Phobos-Grunt — failed to leave Earth orbit in 2011.