PSLV-C25 rocket carrying India's Mars Orbiter Mission blasts off from Sriharikota centre at 2.38 pm on November 5, 2013 (AFP)
In a tricky operation carried out early this morning, India's first mission to Mars - Mangalyaan - was pushed further away from Earth. Its onboard rocket motor was fired to give it more velocity, said scientists.
The officials added that several such midnight maneuvers will be conducted till December 1 when it is sent off on its long journey to Mars.
"On the night of November 30, the final firing operation will be conducted which will make the satellite escape the Earth's gravity and travel towards Mars," Dr MYS Prasad, Director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, told NDTV.
India successfully launched Mangalyaan on November 5, a Rs 450-crore mission that has been in the making for over 15 months with over 500 scientists working on it.
Mangalyaan entered the Earth's orbit around 44 minutes after blastoff on Tuesday, completing its first stage and a critical part of its journey towards the Red planet. (First pictures)
About 2100 seconds after a clean launch at 2.38 pm from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, the orbitor separated from its launch rocket.
The launch rocket "has placed the Mars Orbiter spacecraft very precisely into an elliptical orbit around Earth," the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO K. Radhakrishnan said from the control room.
The Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Hindi and is the size of a small car, will now orbit Earth for nearly a month, building up the necessary velocity to break free from our planet's gravitational pull. That will be the next big stage for the orbiter, which will then begin a nine-month journey which will test scientists from ISRO to the full.
It is scheduled to reach the orbit of Mars in September 2014.
Almost half of the 40 attempts made globally to reach Mars have failed, including one by China in 2011.
Mangalyaan has been described as the next logical step for India after ISRO successfully sent a probe called Chandrayaan to the moon in 2008.
The total cost of the Mars project is Rs 450 crore, one-sixth of the cost of a Mars probe set to be launched by NASA in 13 days.