Mangalyaan earns a nod from Google

New Delhi: Google Doodle on Friday marked one month since the historic entry of India's first Mars mission spacecraft Mangalyaan (also known as the Mars Orbiter Mission) with a graphic depiction of the orbiter in space.

At the time of its successful entry into the Mars orbit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made much of the fact that the low cost mission earned India the distinction of being the only country in the world to succeed on its maiden attempt. The budget of $74 million was barely one tenth of what it cost NASA to send the Maven spacecraft to Mars.

Mangalyaan was India's first interplanetary mission and put ISRO behind the Soviet space programme, NASA and the European Space Agency as only the fourth space agency to succeed in reaching Mars. In the Asian context the feat gave India an edge over its arch rival China which had failed in its 2011 mission.

PM Modi also touted the fact that the cost of the mission was less than the approximately $100 million budget that was spent on making Hollywood blockbuster 'Gravity'.