ISRO looks at a Mars mission by 2013-2015
31 Aug 2009
Panaji: India has begun lining up a mission to the Red Planet, keeping in mind a time frame of 2013-2015, Indian Space Research Organisation chief G Madhavan Nair said on Monday. "We have given a call for proposal to different scientific communities. Depending on the type of experiments they propose, we will be able to plan the mission," he said.
Nair also said that the mission to Mars was at a conceptual stage and would be taken up only after Chandrayaan-2. "Once in two years you get an opportunity for the mission," Nair said.
The ISRO chairman was in Goa to host the eighth international conference on Low Cost Planetary Missions. He pointed out that the mission on Mars will also be a low cost one, much like Chandrayaan-1, which cost less than $100 million.
Nair was speaking in the aftermath of the termination of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which lost contact with ISRO's Byalalu, Bangalore-based Deep Space Network on Saturday.
Though it was slated to be a two-year mission, ISRO has already termed the mission a complete success, pointing out that nearly 95% of the lunar orbiter's scientific targets had already been achieved in less than a year.
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