India to launch Orbiter to Mars next week

“Actually as far as the satellite is concerned it has to travel for 270 days and all systems including the propellant system should work on all these days till it reaches the Mars orbital for experiments to conduct,” he said.
 
Billed as a pathfinder to test technologies to fly to orbit and communicate from Mars, the satellite follows India's successful 2008-2009 Chandrayaan-1 moon probe, which discovered water molecules in the lunar soil.
 
NASA would also launch Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft in November.
 
MAVEN will focus on Mars' thin atmosphere, but rather than hunting methane, it is designed to help scientists figure out how the planet managed to lose an atmosphere that at one time was believed to be thicker than Earth's.