10 Things to Know About India's Mission to Mars

With the latest Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, India is all set to join the elite club of countries that have successfully sent an inter-planetary probe to the Red Planet.

The final eight and half hour countdown began at 06:08 (Indian Standard Time), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced on its website. The agency said that the weather at the launch-site is cloudy but, the initiation will take place as scheduled.

Here are few things about the mission:

1. The launch is expected to take place at 14:38 (IST) November 5, 2013 Tuesday (03:30 EST). The agency had earlier planned to send the probe in October, but rescheduled due to poor weather at the launch site.

2. India's Mars Probe is called Mangalyaan, which means Mars craft in Hindi.

3. The umanned probe weighs about 1.5 tonnes and will be launched atop the PSLV-C25 (in its XL version) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

4. The gold-color probe, about the size of a refrigerator, is much smaller than Mars probes made in the U.S. or Russia.

5. If successful, India will be the fourth nation to reach Mars. Currently, the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe have been successful in sending exploratory vehicles to the Red Planet.

6. India spent 4.5 billion rupees or $73.5 million on the mission, which is a fraction of the cost spent by other space agencies. The country's budget allocation for Space Sciences in 2013-14 was about $84.19 million.

7. The probe will collect data about morphology, mineralogy and martian atmosphere and look for methane on the planet (NASA had announced in September that Curiosity had failed to find the gas).

8. Once launched, the mission will orbit Earth for about 25 days and will embark its journey Dec. 1. It is scheduled to reach Mars Sept. 24, 2014.

9. The mission has 41 percent chance of success; in the past, 21 out of 51 such missions have failed. Japan failed to launch its Mars craft in 2009 while China suffered a setback in 2011.

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

ISRO says that the mission will serve as evidence that India is capable of conducting deep-space exploration and that larger missions to mars will follow in the future.

The agency has provided a link to the live webcast of the launch.