India's maiden mission to Mars - the Mars Orbiter spacecraft - left Earth's orbit in the early hours of Sunday to begin its 300-day voyage to the red planet.

India's maiden mission to Mars - the Mars Orbiter spacecraft - left Earth's orbit in the early hours of Sunday to begin its 300-day voyage to the red planet.

India's space programme reached a major mile-stone a little past midnight as its maiden spacecraft to Mars,Mangalyaan,left the earth's orbit in the early hours of sunday to begin its 300-days journey to the red planet

The Bangalore based Indian space Research Organisation(ISRO) Started the complcated the trans-Mars injection,a critical event for the hurling the spacecraft Mars into the sun's orbit at 12.49 am on sunday(IST) and the process took about 22 minutes,and the spacecraft mars was successfully placed into the planned.The Mars transfer trajectory to begin its 680 km voyage to reach the planet's orbit.

"The trans-Mars injection was completed successfully.with this,a major challenge has been crossed.The next one is the Mars orbit Insertion on 24 sep.2014.

"In between, we can have some mid-course corrections. The first one can be planned for December 11." Isro chairman told k.RadhaKrishnan.if the spacecraft makes it to Mars,India will join the select club of the US,RUSSIA and EUROPE-who have all had a closer encounter with mars.

 Mangalyaan is now on its 680-million-km voyage to Mars.After reaching the Mars orbit,the five payloads on the spacecraft will then start performing experiments for the next six months .   The Mars Orbiter mission was launched by Bangalore-headquartered Isro on November 5 from Sriharikota. 

"The liquid engine burn time during the trans-Mars injection was 1328.89 sec and the imparted incremental velocity was 647.96 m/sec. Following the completion of this manoeuvre, the Earth orbiting phase of the spacecraft ended," said Isro right just after the operation was completed.The spacecraft had so far been in Earth-bound orbits with different apogees (the farthest point from Earth). Five orbit-raising manoeuvres had been performed on Mars Orbiter, and the apogee was raised to over 1.92 lakh km before it was successfully placed in the Mars transfer trajectory.

Despite the late development,Isro's Mars mission facebook pages was flooded with several thousand congratulatiory messages and likes......an indication of how more and more Indians are rooting for Mangalyaan's success.After moving from Earth's orbit, the spacecraft will be monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennae at Byalalu.

Since its Launch on november 5 from Sriharikota in Andhra, the spacecraft performed five orbit-raising manoevres before performing the "mother of all sling-shots".it will now be monitored by the spacecraft control centre at Isro Telemetry,Tracking and command network in Bengaluru.Three ground stations of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, at Madrid, Goldstone and Canberra will also assist Isro in monitoring the spacecraft.

According to Programme director Mylswamy Annadurai told HT that the next immediate challenge was to ensure that the spacecraft remained on its intended track.

"The solar radiation pressure can disturb the spacecraft and we have to ascertain that the spacecraft is able to balance itself against the solar radiation pressure."We have solar panels which can be manipulated slowly so that any kind of disturbance in the orbit is accordingly balanced."

After 72 hours, the spacecraft would have moved nearly 9.25 lakh km from Earth, Annadurai said.

"We will soon be able to determine from the ground station data whether the spacecraft is on its targeted path, and accordingly plan the mid course correction."

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