Hello Mars, here comes India

Our fingers are crossed as our space scientists prepare to wake the hibernating engine from safe mode on Mangalyaan on Monday. They can rest assured that it is only for good luck that we make the gesture since we have implicit trust in their technological capabilities, which are nearing their apotheosis in putting the Mars Orbiter Mission in place around the Red Planet. It is a moot point whether the height of Indian achievement in the last several thousand years will come to be represented by the Orbiter circling Mars or the composing of the Upanishads.

The cost at which our engineers have pioneered space exploration — the standing joke is the Indian Mars mission cost less than the making of Gravity, the most recent award-winning movie on space travel — is a feather in their caps. The picture of a rocket travelling to the launch pad in Thumba on a bicycle will remind us of the most humble beginnings of India’s ambition to become a space power. On Wednesday, Mangalyaan will join Nasa’s Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Orbiter), which should have synched perfectly into Mars orbit some time on Sunday after a 10-month and 442-million-mile journey.

While Maven will be devoted to studying the upper atmosphere of Earth’s neighbour to understand how the Martian climate changed from an assumed life-supporting presence of flowing water and minerals that will form only in water, Mangalyaan will also be checking for methane in the Martian atmosphere since that gas is known to indicate that life may be supported. How satisfying would it be to know that we are not alone in this Universe even if an alien is probably far different from the standard dimensions of life as we know them?

The argument over whether a developing country like India can afford space exploration is too narrow-minded. The importance of a scientific temperament cannot be overstated. The fact that so many countries are reaching out to space to understand more of how we came to be as an intelligent life form should be ample proof of the importance of mankind’s exploration of the limits of its knowledge and curiosity about celestial wonders.

And then there is, of course, the theory that Mars is possibly the next most habitable planet if ever we have to abandon Earth. If by studying Mars we can form some idea of how to deal with climate change — a planet that once possessed flowing water is today cold and dry because gas escaped from its atmosphere — then maybe science can help man live better on his own planet. Little wonder then that our eye will, figuratively, be on the sky over the next few crucial days as we wait for Isro to say that it has, once again, executed its mission to perfection.