India has successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars.
Scientists at mission control erupted into cheers as the spacecraft began circling the Red Planet at around 2:10am (Irish time) this morning.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is only the fourth organisation to achieve a successful Mars orbiting mission after NASA, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union's agency.
India is the first country to successfully achieve a Mars orbit on its first attempt.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) cost India the relatively minuscule sum of £45m (€57.4m). It launched on 5th November 2013. Although primarily intended to show that India has the technology to reach Mars, the craft also contains a camera and some scientific monitoring tools, such as a methane sensor.
Other space agencies have been congratulation India's on Twitter:
Howdy @MarsCuriosity ? Keep in touch. I'll be around.
— ISRO's Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
Congratulations to @ISRO @MarsOrbiter on successful orbit insertion around #Mars, welcome to the club!
— ESA (@esa) September 24, 2014
It has been a busy week above Mars, with NASA's Maven spacecraft having achieved orbit on Monday after a 442-million-mile flight through space that began a year ago.
Maven fired its main engines for about 33 minutes to slow down enough to "capture" into Mars' orbit.
Flight controllers managing the US$671m (€522m) mission will spend six weeks checking the robotic explorer's instruments before it begins observations of the Red Planet's atmosphere.
