This article first appeared In India Today On October 4, 2022
Around 8 am on the morning of September 24, 2014, Bengaluru was abuzz, the headquarters of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) was the most lively it had been in some time. It was hosting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the mission control, who had just won the general election a few months back.
But, the focus of the team of scientists busy on their computers and consoles was somewhere else, about 115.33 million kilometers away — on Mars. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) a.k.a Mangalyaan, India’s maiden foray into interplanetary exploration, was about to reach its destination..