The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), popularly called Mangalyaan ("Mars craft" in Sanskrit), was India's first interplanetary spacecraft — a technology demonstrator that turned into a scientific and symbolic triumph.
MOM's primary purpose was to demonstrate that ISRO could design, launch and operate a spacecraft across interplanetary distances — deep-space communication, navigation, and orbit insertion around another planet.
Alongside that engineering goal, the orbiter carried a small scientific payload to study the Martian surface, morphology, mineralogy and atmosphere — including a search for methane, a possible marker of biological or geological activity.
Demonstrate India's capability to reach, enter and operate in Mars orbit — the core technology milestone.
Study Martian surface features, mineralogy and the atmosphere using five onboard instruments.
Launched on 5 November 2013 aboard a PSLV-C25 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, the spacecraft first circled Earth in a series of orbit-raising manoeuvres. On 1 December 2013 it performed a Trans-Mars Injection burn, leaving Earth's gravity for a roughly 10-month cruise across about 650 million kilometres of space.
On 24 September 2014, MOM fired its main engine and successfully entered Mars orbit — making India the fourth space agency in the world (after NASA, the Soviet space program and ESA) to reach Mars, and the very first to do so on its maiden attempt.
Designed as a six-month mission, Mangalyaan operated for about eight years, far outliving its planned life.
It orbited Mars in a highly elliptical path, its Mars Colour Camera capturing sweeping full-disk views of the planet that few other missions could match. By late 2022 the spacecraft had exhausted its propellant and its battery had drained; ISRO lost the communication link, and the mission was declared to have reached the end of its life after a remarkable innings.