Mangalyaan Mission to Mars: The Fart Probe

India has launched a rocket carrying a fart probe that is heading for the Red Planet.

The rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India on Tuesday morning. It will orbit the Earth for a few weeks and slowly build up speed before a final blast of its engine sends it rocketing towards Mars.

If all goes well the Mangalyaan (which means Mars craft in Hindi) will travel through space for 300 days and then go into orbit around Mars. When in orbit it will use a special instrument to look for farts in the Martian atmosphere.

Maybe he's always cranky because he has gas
Source: Duck Dodgers in the 24½ century

OK, the Mangalyaan is not actually looking (or smelling) for farts. It is looking for a gas called methane. Methane is made by bacteria, like the bacteria in your stomach. One of the major sources of methane on Earth is farts and burps from animals such as cows. There probably aren't any cows on Mars, but if the Indians find a lot of methane it might be because there are bacteria, and that would mean there is life on Mars, and that would be awesome!

But just getting to Mars without messing something up is hard. More than half of the missions to Mars have failed.

The Americans, the Europeans and the Russians are the only groups that have had successful Mars missions. Japan tried and failed in 2003 and two years ago China's attempt blew up shortly after take-off.

The Indian probe has so far managed to get into orbit around Earth. The next challenge is to head into space in exactly the right direction at exactly the right speed and then get to a point half-way around the sun at exactly the same time as Mars. If that works out, there is the tricky job of getting the probe into orbit around Mars rather than crashing into it.

Other probes have already looked for methane on Mars, so the Mangalyaan might not find anything new. But even if doesn't, just completing its mission would still be an amazing achievement and proof that developing countries like India can match it with the big space explorers in the USA and Europe.

Check out this video of the launch.



Out of this world links.
NASA is all over Mars.
Explore Mars yourself with Google Maps or better still, Google Earth.