India's Mars mission gets closer to destination

India's relentless efforts to map out Mars will finally bear fruits with its 'Mangalyaan' mission on its way to accomplish the task.

The spacecraft has travelled half-way already and will reach Mars in a few months. This endeavor on its successful completion will give a new lift to India's space journey.

The Indian Space Research organization (ISRO) had launched the spacecraft on November 5 2013.

The spacecraft since then, has traversed 34 crore km of the total distance of 68 crore km to make it to the red planet, at the speed of 7 lakh km a day.

The progress of the spacecraft has made the ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan happy with the progress especially when many critics were expressing their doubts about the Mangalyaan mission launched by India.

Closely following on the heels of the US Space Agency NASA, the spacecraft's main task will be to find out is mineral composition.

The spacecraft will detect signs of methane gas in its atmosphere to assess the possibility of life on the red planet.