India has completed another test for its low-cost Mars mission

India’s maiden interplanetary mission passed a critical test on Monday in its low-cost quest to reach Mars. Scientists successfully test fired the main liquid engine of the $75-million Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter for a brief four seconds, just ahead of getting the spacecraft ready to slip into the Martian orbit on Sept 24. “We have just test-fired the engine for 3.968 seconds and it has served two purposes. We restarted the engine after 300 days and we were able to fire it. It was also a useful trajectory-correction maneuver where we reduced the velocity of the spacecraft by 2.18 meters per second from a speed 22.5 kilometers per second, a small decrement,” V Koteswara Rao, scientific secretary to the space agency Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, told Forbes. Rao said the exercise was significant as it means that the main liquid engine is available on Sept 24 to propel Mangalyaan into the orbit of Mars. “I can now say that it is highly possible that the orbit injection operation on Sept 24 will be successful,” said Rao.