Wearing traditional Indian attire with colorful fabrics and ornaments and beaming with joy, the young scientists who contributed to the success of India’s maiden mission to Mars celebrated today the fact that Mangalyaan has reached its destination and is now on an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet.

The Mangalyaan spacecraft arrived at Mars after a 300-day marathon, travelling more than 670 million km, and the scientists at the Indian space agency’s mission tracking centre in Bangalore expressed their joy by applauding, cheering and exchanging high-fives.

To understand the magnitude of the task, suffice it to say that in the history of space exploration about two-thirds of the missions to Mars have failed. It should also be noted that both Russia and the US failed in their maiden attempts, and that India succeeded with one of the cheapest interplanetary space missions ever!

“We are really not racing with anyone, but with ourselves to reach the next level of excellence,” said Mr Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization.

The total cost of the Indian mission is estimated at approximately 74 million dollars, about three-quarters the budget of the Oscar-winning movie Gravity about astronauts stranded in space, which cost about 100 million dollars to make.