India’s Another Mars Mission By 2020, Reveals ISRO Chief

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Radhakrishnan said on Wednesday that the second mission to Mars could be between 2018-2020. However, he clarified that it may not be similar to the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as ‘Mangalyaan’, last year.

"MOM is not an end, but a beginning of our next scientific mission. The next mission to Mars may happen between 2018-2020. It may necessarily not be an Orbiter Mission like MOM. We need to get feedback from the scientific community on what kind of project would this be," he said.

The next mission would also focus on Chandrayan 2 — the Moon Mission — in which India will have a lander and a rover in three-year's time, and Aditya, ISRO Sun Mission, said Radhakrishnan.

S Arunan, Mars Orbiter Mission, project director, said that while undertaking the mission to the Red Planet, the Indian Space Agency had carefully studied failures of the mission undertaken by other countries. India became the first country to script success just in its maiden attempt.

"For some 2-3 months we studied from the failures of other countries who had undertaken the mission. So, we learnt from the failures of others. Risk was well mitigated in advance," he said.