The PSLV-C25 rocket carrying India's Mars Orbiter Mission blasts off from Sriharikota centre at 2.38 pm on November 5, 2013

India lofted a Mars-bound spacecraft into Earth's orbit on Tuesday, a major step in its hopes to become the first country in Asia to reach Mars.The launch is only the first step, however, in a perilous 300-day journey that has ended in failure for about a third of all previous efforts. Only the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency have reached Mars, and none of them managed it on the first try.Because India's attempts to develop a more powerful launcher had failed, the spacecraft could not be sent directly on its way. Instead, it will have to orbit Earth for nearly a month as a series of small bursts by its thrusters slowly nudges it into space. If all goes well, it will reach Mars on September 24.At a cost of $72 million, the Mars project is relatively inexpensive, but that has not stopped critics from raising questions about why the government is pouring money into space programs when India has so many pressing social, educational and infrastructure needs.A prominent scholar and activist, Jean Dreze, told India Today that the Mars mission "seems to be part of the Indian elite's delusional quest for superpower status."Those concerns were not widely shared by India's leaders. In the heat of an election campaign, both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi, the candidate for prime minister from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, were quick to congratulate the scientists on their initial success. "India has once again established itself in the world," Modi said. "I congratulate the scientists and technicians behind the mission."Indian officials also defended the program as yielding technological advances that are hard to predict, claims that critics were quick to dismiss.G. Madhavan Nair, a former head of the Indian Space Research Organization, told The Indian Express this year that "instead of concentrating on practical missions, we are spending money to prove nothing.""Someone has made some statement that the Mars mission will prove new technologies," he said, but added that "as a person familiar with these technologies, I believe that there is no new technology involved."The space program is not only a source of nationalist pride, but also a weapon in India's competition with China. Shortly after the failure of a Chinese mission to Mars in 2011, Singh, addressing the nation on India's Independence Day, announced the plans for an Indian attempt. "This spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for us in the area of science and technology," he said.India's Mars venture was preceded by a similar mission that placed a spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, in orbit around the moon in 2008. The moon mission followed a similar effort by China, and officials were blunt about their intentions."China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them, catch that gap, bridge the gap," Bhaskar Narayan, a director at the Indian space agency, was quoted by Reuters as saying at the time.Once the spacecraft nears Mars, it will be maneuvered into a low orbit to assay the Martian atmosphere, looking in particular for the presence of methane, a possible indicator of the existence of life processes at some point in the planet's history.The modest size of the payload, at 33 pounds, is an indicator of the limitations of the mission. But repeated failures in the development of a rocket capable of carrying payloads of more than two tons had led to delays.

© 2013, The New York Times News Service

S.K. Das, a former member of the Space Commission, which sets Indian space policy, said Tuesday that "we should see this as a technical exercise," although he conceded that a more powerful rocket could have made for a more direct and less complex journey to Mars."It is a long journey, and we can only understand the challenges and the problems by attempting it," he added. "The first stage has been flawless."