India shall roll out its Mars Orbiter mission in November this year amid rising fear of a comet heading towards the Red Planet around the same time.
As per reports, the Comet C/2013 A1, discovered in January in Australia, is crashing into Mars in October.
Earlier, NASA has said that the chance of comet striking Mars is 1 in 8,000, but has now revised calculations putting the possibility of an impact at just 1 in 120,000.
ISRO Chief K Radhakrishnan has said that they do not expect any effect on the spacecraft.He added that it will pass 50,000 km away from Mars’ surface and scientists are looking at all possibilities.
India’s Mars Orbiter is scheduled to carry a scientific payload consisting of five instruments weighing about 15 kg.It is expected to exit Earth’s orbit on 27 November and will take over 300 days to travel towards the Red Planet.
India will become the sixth country to launch a mission to Mars after the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and China.