India's Mars Mission
India's Mars Orbiter Mission, the country's first interplanetary foray, is due to blast off on November 5 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. Billed as a pathfinder to test technologies to fly to orbit and communicate from Mars, the satellite follows India's successful 2008-2009 Chandrayaan-1 moon probe, which discovered water molecules in the lunar soil.