New Delhi, Sept 22 : India has succeeded in its first test on route to entering the orbit of Mars as the main liquid engine on the Mars Orbiter spacecraft was successfully fired for four seconds on Monday.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed the report, saying that they had a perfect burn for four seconds as programmed and that the Orbiter's trajectory has been corrected.

The Mars Orbiter Mission will now go ahead with its plan for Mars Orbit Insertion on Wednesday.

Terming the mission as important, scientist Amitabh Pandey said that the mission will hopefully succeed in entering the orbit of Mars on Wednesday morning.

"This is very important because on the morning of September 24, when the Mars Orbiter Mission has to enter the orbit of Mars, there is a main engine called the liquid engine that has to be tested because it has been dormant for around 10 months and there were some minor orbiter corrections, so both have been successfully achieved today. So we are very hopeful that on that day, it will enter the orbit of Mars successfully," said Pandey.

He also said that it was quite challenging because when the instruments were made active at a temperature of less than -200 degree Celsius after being lying dormant for so many months, they faced some faults which have now been verified and are working perfectly.

"There is no issue that the liquid engine will not fire. However, now it has to fire at correct time and for the correct duration, only then will it successful ly enter the orbit of Mars," Pandey added.

He also said that Mars mission is very important because it is a technological demonstration that India is capable of inter-planetary missions. Apart from that, Mars has been the target for space scientists for many years and for India to become a partner in that, Mars needs to be studied in detail to develop and demonstrate the country's technological capability.

"We are studying everything about Mars, like the weather condition there, how to make it habitable and whether there is possibility of life on the planet or not, " said Pandey.

ISRO scientists had last week loaded the commands to test if the engine is in good shape or not.

Earlier this month, the spacecraft authorization committee had decided to carry out the four-second test to ensure that the long duration of idling has not affected the engine that carries corrosive fuel. (ANI)