$70 million is what the estimates say that only Sandra Bullock as an actor had earned as fee from the makers of the hit movie Gravity leaving aside all the other expenses incurred in the production and promotion process. But what’s more fascinating is that India launched its own Mars Orbiter Mission – Mangalyaan, a real one in merely $74 million. Launching it into the Earth’s orbit on 5th November 2013, and then into the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the activity made India the first country to successfully send a spacecraft to the Red Planet in it’s first attempt.
Prior to this ground-breaking success a total of about 51 missions had been attempted, the odds were stacked because only 21 were successful but this successful attempt has put India in the limelight amongst all the other nations in the world, particularly the United States, Europe and the Soviets. The United States however seem to have taken a keen interest in co-operating with India as the Indian spacecraft continues to gather data about the planet.
One can call it a coup over the neaighbouring rival China which is aggressively progressing in fulfilling it’s space ambitions amidst the ongoing Indo-Chinese Border dispute. India’s objective to showcase it’s rocket launch systems, spacecraft-building expertise and it’s capabilities of launching & handling operations was greeted through this very success. As patriotic as it may seem or rather going by the growth-related prospects of a nation, India needed this historic day.
Although rigged with hazard and other health-related issues that hosts itself in the Martian atmosphere, maybe in the future we will get to see an Indian man with the Indian flag on the surface of the Red Planet. Although possible only fictionally till date, maybe with this progressive type of stance that India has showed through this successful mission, we may expect that fiction to turn into reality & on which when a movie be made, Sandra Bullock may star yet again.
Picture Courtesy: Next Big What & India Wires
