India is aiming to send a probe to the Mars by November of this year instead of sending a second vehicle to the moon.

If successfully, the mission will help India enter the elite club of nations including the US, Russia, Europe and Japan, who have conducted such missions. Scientists have said that the mission to Mars in the year 2013 will include a orbital probe will be put around the red planet to study its climate and geology.

The space agency will launch the orbiter spaceship on a Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket from ISRO launch site at Sriharikota in the state of Andhra Pradesh, The cost of the project is estimated to be between $70 and 90 million dollars or 4 to 5 billion rupees. The government has allocated 1.25 billion rupees for the project during the previous fiscal year.

According to plans presented to the government by the space agency the spacecraft will be launched during October-November 2013 and it will enter the Mars orbit by September 2014. The collect satellite images and transmit them back to India to allow scientists to study the possibility of life there.

J N Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad and the principal scientist of Chandrayaan-1, at the Indian Science Congress (ISC) said that the country will send a probe to the red planet this year.