India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft 'Glitch' Resolved

Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) announced Tuesday that 'Mangalyaan', the spacecraft headed towards Mars has successfully reached a higher orbit around the earth and is back on track.

India's ambitious Mars Orbiter Mission was launched November 5 and experienced a technical problem Monday. The interplanetary spacecraft had to be sent from 71,623km (44,000 miles) to 100,000km (62,000 miles). But, a problem with the liquid fuel thrusters led it to reach just 78,276 km.

ISRO has now pushed the craft to the desired distance. "Fourth supplementary orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 05:03:50 hrs (IST) on Nov 12, 2013, with a burn Time of 303.8 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in Apogee is from 78276km to 118642km," the space agency said in a statement.

The Mars Orbiter Mission will be launched using an unusual 'slingshot' method where it will slowly build velocity to get away from earth's gravitational pull, according to AFP.

ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan said on Monday said that the failure to get the craft to a higher orbit wasn't a setback.

"The [spacecraft] is healthy and it encountered a problem when a specific redundancy test was being conducted and it failed to reach the desired velocity it was to achieve," Radhakrishnan told NDTV.

The mission has 41% chances of success; in the past, 21 out of 51 such missions have failed. Japan was unsuccessful in launching its mars craft in 2009 while China suffered a setback in 2011.

Mangalyaan will have about six months to collect data. Instead of crashing, it will be directed away from the planet.

MOM is expected to reach the Red Planet September 24, 2014.