It’s been a rough year for the government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Economic growth has cratered and the currency has wobbled. The Hindu nationalist party just clobbered Singh’s Congress Party in state-level elections and opposition leader Narendra Modi is the favorite to replace Singh in nationwide elections in the first half of 2014.
Amid all the gloom, Singh and the rest of India just received some much-needed good news. The country has an ambitious program to explore space, and today the government-run mission control announced that India’s first mission to Mars had cleared a major obstacle on its way to the Red Planet. The Mars Orbiter, informally dubbed the Mangalyaan, successfully carried out its first Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM), the Indian Space Research Organization said on its official website. That keeps the Mangalyaan on track to reach Mars by September next year.
India’s Mars probe (PDF) is the country’s entry in an Asian space race; for those of you keeping score, the Indians win points for aiming farthest. Japan in September launched the Epsilon rocket, designed to be an inexpensive way to put satellites into earth orbit. China is shooting for the moon, having launched its first lunar rover mission on Dec. 2. South Korea in January launched its first space rocket and last month unveiled plans for a lunar mission (albeit one that won’t launch until 2020).
via India and China Move Ahead in the Asian Space Race – Businessweek.
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