Mangalyaan, ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission, launched on 5 November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars on 24 September 2014 — making India the first country to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt. Designed to last six months, it worked for about eight years before contact was lost in 2022.
Every step from launch to the last signal: 12 moments across nine years.
12 milestones from 2013 to 2022: 7 successes, 0 failures, 1 partial successes and 4 other milestones.
PSLV could not send a spacecraft straight to Mars, so ISRO launched Mangalyaan into an elongated Earth orbit and let the spacecraft's own 440-newton engine stretch that orbit, burn by burn, until it could break free.
5 Nov 2013 · PSLV · Success
PSLV-XL lifted off from Sriharikota and placed the 1,337 kg spacecraft in an Earth orbit of about 250 × 23,500 km. The fourth stage coasted for an unusually long time before its final burn, to release the spacecraft at the right point.
7–9 Nov 2013 · Success
Three firings of the spacecraft's engine on 7, 8 and 9 November raised the far point of its orbit step by step, each time at perigee where a burn does the most good.
11 Nov 2013 · Partial
The fourth burn was meant to lift the apogee to about 100,000 km but reached only about 78,276 km after the spacecraft's primary and backup engine-control systems were tested at the same time and the engine flow was cut back.
12 Nov 2013 · Success
A supplementary burn early on 12 November lifted the apogee to about 118,000 km, and a final burn on 16 November raised it to about 192,000 km — ready for departure.
Comeback from Fourth burn falls short.
What went wrong: The fourth orbit-raising burn left the apogee about 22,000 km short of plan.
Why: Engine thrust was cut back during a test of the backup control system, so the burn delivered less speed than planned.
What fixed it: ISRO added a supplementary burn the next morning that made up the shortfall, keeping the Mars departure date on schedule.
1 Dec 2013 · Success · Left Earth for Mars
In the early hours of 1 December the engine fired for about 22 minutes, sending Mangalyaan out of Earth orbit on a 680-million-kilometre path to Mars.
For ten months Mangalyaan coasted around the Sun, with small trajectory corrections along the way. Its main engine sat idle for 300 days — and it had to fire again, unattended, millions of kilometres away.
Dec 2013 – Jun 2014 · Success
Small thruster firings in December 2013 and June 2014 fine-tuned the path. The cruise was accurate enough that one of the planned corrections was skipped.
22 Sep 2014 · Success
Two days before arrival, ISRO fired the main engine for about four seconds — the first time since leaving Earth — to prove it still worked. It did, and the final correction was folded into the same test.
24 Sep 2014 · Success · Mars on the first attempt
The spacecraft turned, fired its engine for about 24 minutes while out of contact behind Mars, and slowed enough to be captured. Confirmation reached Bengaluru around 8 am IST. India became the first country to succeed at Mars on its first attempt and the first Asian nation in Mars orbit.
Mangalyaan's reported cost of about ₹450 crore made it one of the cheapest Mars missions ever flown.
Its elongated orbit — a few hundred kilometres up at the low point, about 72,000 km at the high point — let Mangalyaan photograph the entire disc of Mars at once, something orbiters closer in cannot do.
25 Sep 2014 · Milestone
The Mars Colour Camera sent back its first images the day after arrival. Over the years it built an atlas of Mars and captured full-disc portraits of the planet.
19 Oct 2014 · Milestone
Less than a month after arrival, comet Siding Spring flew close to Mars. Mangalyaan was moved to shelter from its dust and observed the encounter alongside NASA's orbiters.
23 Mar 2015 · Milestone
The mission reached its planned six-month life with fuel to spare, and ISRO extended it. It went on to observe Martian dust storms, clouds over Valles Marineris, the polar caps and the far side of the moon Deimos.
April 2022 · Milestone
During a long eclipse in April 2022 the spacecraft fell silent. ISRO concluded its propellant had run out, so it could no longer point its solar panel at the Sun, and in October 2022 declared it non-recoverable — about eight years after arrival, against a design life of six months.
Mangalyaan entered orbit around Mars on 24 September 2014, about 10 months after its launch on 5 November 2013.
PSLV was not powerful enough to send the spacecraft directly to Mars. Instead it was placed in an elongated Earth orbit, and the spacecraft fired its own engine several times to stretch that orbit before a final burn on 1 December 2013 sent it towards Mars.
About eight years. It was designed for six months but kept operating until contact was lost during a long eclipse in April 2022. ISRO declared it non-recoverable in October 2022.
The reported cost was about ₹450 crore (roughly US$74 million at the time), which made it one of the least expensive Mars missions ever flown.
Related: PSLV, ISRO Missions Timeline, Chandrayaan-1, Aditya-L1.