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India To Launch Mars Orbiter "Mangalyaan" Tuesday
sfcrazy writes "On Tuesday (Mangalwaar) the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) will launch the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The spaceship will take over 10 months to reach Mars and, if everything goes well, it would make India the first country to send a payload to Mars in its first attempt, and would beat close rival China whose recent mission failed."
Awesome now that India has their poverty and corruption issues finally solved.
In case anyone was wondering, the US succeeded on the country's second attempt to launch a mission to Mars. This was the Mariner 4 flyby launched Nov 28, 1964. The first US attempt, the identical Mariner 3, failed three weeks earlier when the shroud on the launch vehicle failed to open properly.
The second attempt by the US to orbit Mars was also successful; Mariner 9 in 1971 became the first (human) probe to orbit Mars (or any other planet), followed within a month by the Russian Mars 2 and Mars 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars
if everything goes well, it would make India the first country to send a payload to Mars in its first attempt,
That's i really big "If".
The USSR failed on their first 8 attempts starting in 1960. They managed to get some our moon on the ninth attempt five years later, still not successful in getting to Mars though. They managed to make Mars orbit in 1971 after 11 failed attempts. Granted, this was very early in manned space flight. Even so, failure is still a very common outcome for any nation attempting it. The EU made it to orbit in 2004, but the lander did not make it. Between 1988 and 1999, the US had three Mars missions that failed, The USSR/Russia 3, and Japan had one as well. In that 11 year span only the US Mars Global Surveyor and Pathfinder missions were successful.
It's not easy to get there, but I certainly wish India the best of luck doing it on the first try. That would be quite a feat.
"Mangal" is Mars in Hindi/Sanskrit. "Yaan" is vehicle Hindi/Sanskrit. "Mangalyaan" thus means a vehicle to Mars. Please stop being a dumb fuck, if you can.
"Yaan" means "Vehicle".. Hindi is my native language. Journey is 'safar' or 'yatra' - Go check it yourself here since you're unlikely to believe me , though I've spoken Hindi all my life - http://dict.hinkhoj.com/words/meaning-of-yaan-in-english.html
It is tradition. Like NASA's 'lucky peanuts'. Infact, NASA has sent some over to ISRO for passing around during the launch.
Early days yet but the launch was apparently successful
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24729073