India's Mars Mission – What it intends to achieve
What India does has always been a subject of great interest and debate in the world. These debates always begin from a critical evaluation of India's multifaceted potential, and culminate in reprimanding our country's evolving prowess.
India's Mangalyaan or Mars mission is an ambitious project that has been completely sidelined by the world media calling it unnecessary scientific experiment by a country that houses almost a third of the world's malnourished people.
Contesting such school of thought, India's maiden Mars mission is a big scientific achievement that places our country amongst the exclusive elite in the space technology.
India is the sixth nation in the world to launch a mission to the red planet. This was done at very low cost. ISRO's reputation for austerity is aptly exemplified by the fact that Mangalyaan was developed recycling an existing spacecraft body design.
Also, it is a commendable feat of ISRO that it has achieved a successful first flight launch mission to the Mars, at a price that would put other space agencies to shame.
ISRO which has indigenously developed technologies to launch spacecraft in the past is fast becoming a space hub in the country and is likely to generate thousands of jobs for our engineers.
The Mars mission comes as a welcome relief to the country facing the problems of economic slowdown. It raises their moral and the common man feels proud at t our scientific achievement. This ambitious mission has strengthened India's foothold in community of scientific nations
More enticing fact about this project is that the kids and teenagers are getting lured to pursuing rocket science in their higher studies. This is a healthy sign for the development of scientific temper in the country.
The Mars mission aims to achieve utilitarian goals by digging deeper into the secrets of the red planet. The orbiter while making an effort towards sniffing traces of methane, would also measure relative abundance of hydrogen in its upper atmosphere, to introspect the history of water in this planet. The mission promises to generate useful engineering and scientific data that could be useful for further research.
Those who say that India that is struggling with problems of poverty and malnutrition sanitation and hygiene should have kept away from taking giant leaps towards scientific fulfilment should understand that our problems are not because of lack of expertise but due to incapacity to execute the right policies.
As a result the 450cr expenditure, incurred on ambitions mars mission should not become an excuse to downplay our capabilities and achievements. If critics say that it was an act of garnering international prestige then yes it is indeed our moment of pride, earned with self reliance. We should not ridicule the great efforts of our scientists, who achieved this feat with little exposure and at with a minimum cost.
Subhra Subhadarshini
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