The first phase of the Mars Orbitor Mission (MOM) a.k.a Mangalyaan was successful yesterday (5th Nov 2013 at 14:38 IST) as the PSLV C-25 successfully put the MOM spacecraft precisely into an elliptical orbit of earth, extremely close to the predicted orbit. The spacecraft will now perform 7 orbits of Earth over the next 4 weeks, gradually increasing the height of the orbit, before departing for a 300-day cruise to Mars entering the Mars orbit on 24th Sep 2014.