India's Mars mission

But what’s really astounding is the cost: £45 million. Really? Is that possible?

Really pleased that they've managed to get into Martian orbit. The cost doesn't surprise me, though. The payload of Mangalyaan is tiny... just 15kg... with a launch mass of the entire spacecraft of just 1,337kg.

Compare this to MAVEN, that reached Mars on Monday, which has a payload of 65kg and a launch mass of 2,454kg. Sure, MAVEN is nearly 10-times the cost, but it contains more advanced instrumentation and required a much bigger rocket to launch it because it is nearly twice the weight.

Factor in the lower salaries paid to Indian space workers, and the overall cost seems about right.

Amazing to think that someone who wins the EuroMillions lottery could afford their own Mars probe.

Amazing to think that someone who wins the EuroMillions lottery could afford their own Mars probe.

🙂 That made me smile 🙂

An amazing achievement, especially as they achieved orbit at the first attempt. Not an easy thing to do.
http://t.co/SHlf31g6xd.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-29357438 .

The orbiter tweets another spectacular image here, showing dust storms

https://twitter.com/MarsOrbiter/status/516555073829081088/photo/1

I love the character they are giving the little orbiter, with its chattering tweets. Just like what Nasa were doing with Curiosity, giving them "apparent" personalities. It a nice ploy to endear the public in their space endeavours. These little things do matter 🙂

Great achievement by India and more importantly its a collaboration to collecting data not collected by the bigger international brothers orbiting the red planet. Filling the small gaps as it were.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29439256 . I think this is a good step forward.  There needs to be more cooperation on space missions by countries.