On September 24, India made history when its Mars Orbiter Mission reached its destination. The orbiter carries a small load of equipment, including a camera and a methane sensor to study the Martian environment.

It also has the fingerprints of a journalist.

Pallava Bagla, a reporter at NDTV, has been covering science and technology in India for 25 years, including the several ups and downs at the Indian Space Research Organisation.

His decades of experience in reporting on the organisation has also resulted in a rapport with them – and unprecedented access. He was the only journalist allowed to see and touch the completed orbiter almost a year before it launched.

A little over a month after the mission’s success, Bagla and his wife Subhadra Menon, who is a professor of health communication, have compiled a book about the story of India’s Mars mission. The book has anecdotes from Bagla’s experiences as well as photographs he took inside and around ISRO’s restricted spaces.

“I have seen from very close quarters the performance and spectacular rise of ISRO,” said Bagla in a conversation with Scroll.in. “I have seen, touched and smelled the satellite. That is the kind of access I got. It became my duty to tell the world of the joys and sorrows of our very talented scientists.”

Here, according to Bagla are the five key defining moments of India’s mission to Mars.

1. The failure of China’s Yinghu-I (November 2011)


The Asian space race, with India and China leading the pack. This is a gathering of Chinese scientists who study the Moon and the Solar System. Seen here at an international conference in Udaipur in 2004. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.


India has been in an unofficial space race with China for some decades now. India reached the moon a year after the Chinese did, leading Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give ISRO a cold shoulder, said Bagla.

When China’s first Mars exploration probe, piggybacking on a Russian satellite, Phobos-Grunt, was left stranded in Earth’s orbit when the latter failed to fire its engines, India saw its chance.

“From there it was a 100 m sprint to reach the marathon to Mars,” said Bagla. “Making Mangalyaan in 15 months followed by a ten-month journey in space is not easy. If we had missed that window, the Chinese could have caught up in the 26 months before it becomes possible to launch another probe to Mars.”

2. Manmohan Singh announces (and names) Mangalyaan (August 2012)


From the Red Fort to the red planet. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announcing India's maiden voyage to Mars on August 15, 2012. Photo credit: Press Information Bureau, Government of India.


On Independence Day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh officially declared  at the Red Fort that India would now set its sights on Mars. ISRO scientists had already begun working on the satellite in June, before Singh’s speech, aiming for a launch in a little over a year.

Although scientists at ISRO and other news publications believe that the Mars Orbiter Mission was never named, Bagla says that this is because of an incorrect rendering of an English translation of his speech.

“His Hindi speeches at Red Fort are written in Urdu,” said Bagla, pointing out that Singh flipped pages from right to left. “In his speech, he called it Mangalyaan, although in the English transcript, there is no mention of it. Since only he had the prerogative to name the mission, I stood my ground and said it has to be called Mangalyaan.”

3. The satellite is made in 15 months (November 2013)


The clean room of the ISRO Satellite Centre where Mangalyaan was born in 15 months. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.



Burning the midnight oil to reach the red planet. Satellite engineers beavering away at the Mangalyaan fabrication facility at the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) in Bangalore. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.


ISRO’s scientists worked overtime for several months on end to ensure the satellite was made in record time. In Bagla’s conversations with scientists abroad, most admitted that they had not even heard of the mission.

Most interplanetary missions take about a decade to make, he added. That India managed to build its own mission in just 15 months “is a magnificent job”.

“For 15 months, S Arunan [the project coordinator] slept in the Satellite Centre,” Bagla said. “He only went home for his daily puja and ablutions. This was possible only because scientists spent 24/7 with the project.”

4. The orbiter successfully launches (November 2013)


The old and the new. India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, a marvel of the most modern rocket engineering, with a cyclist in the foreground.  Cycles are among the most humble modes of transportation in India and rockets can put satellites into space – such is the magic of life. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.


                                                                             
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, standing tall, almost as high as a 15-storey building and the weight of about 50 full-grown elephants, in its 25th flight put India's Mangalyaan in space. Photo credit: ISRO.

ISRO launched the Mars Orbiter with a Polar Synchronous Launch Vehicle, a lighter rocket that has consistently had successful launches for the past ten years. Given ISRO’s PSLV track record, there was no reason that the launch should fail.

Even so, it took 40 minutes before scientists could determine whether the launch had succeeded, as opposed to the usual 20 minutes for other PSLV launches.

“I recall it was a balmy afternoon and it had rained half an hour before the launch,” said Bagla. “People wondered whether the launch would happen, but then I knew that Chandrayaan-I had launched in heavy rain.”

5. Mission Mars is achieved (September 2014)


Defying the cliché that Mars is for men, Indian women engineers keeping a vigil in the control room at the launch pad in Sriharikota. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.



Straight out of sci-fi, the high tech Mission Operations Centre in the heart of the nondescript industrial neighbourhood of Bangalore. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla.


On the day the orbiter reached Mars, Bagla says he spent as much time reporting as on fielding calls from local and foreign journalists who were unable to contact anyone at ISRO. He reckons that he gave around 200 interviews that day.

“For me, the most incredible moment was when they announced that Mangalyaan had reached Mars,” said Bagla. “In my piece to camera, you can see that my eyes swell up as I announce it. They have done a marvellous job and now the results are pouring in.”

From a technological mission, it is now a scientific one, he added, and it shows India in a different light to the world.

Reaching For the Stars: India's Journey to Mars and Beyond (Bloomsbury) will be launched on November 12 in New Delhi.