ISRO to launch Mars mission by 2013

India [ Images ]n Space research Organisation Chairman G Madavan Nair said on Monday that India would launch a mission to Mars [ Images ] by 2013.

The ISRO has begun the preparations for sending a spacecraft to Mars.

Earlier, on August 13, the government sanctioned seed money of Rs 10 crore for the Mars project, to carry out various studies on the experiments to be conducted, the route of the mission and other related details necessary to scale the new frontier.

On Sunday, ISRO called off its maiden lunar mission, after the Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore lost control over the Chndrayaan–I spacecraft.

Though Chandrayaan- I was slated to be a two-year mission, Nair claimed that ISRO scientists have achieved nearly 95 per cent of Chandrayaan's [ Images ] scientific goals in less than a year.