With New Delhi's iconic Red Fort as a backdrop, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced Wednesday his country has set its sights on the Red Planet. In a Wednesday speech marking India's independence day, Singh said his government has approved plans to put an unmanned probe in orbit around Mars. The mission "will be a huge step for us in the area of science and technology," he said. It's an ambitious goal, with a planned launch in November 2013 for a 10-month flight, said Kiran Karnik, a former official with the Indian Space Research Organization. "By the time the mission gets there, Mars will be comparatively the closest," Karnik told CNN's sister network CNN-IBN. "So there's a small window in which we need to make a launch and that's the reason the mission has to go up next year."
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Indian Mars probe will be "a huge step," Indian PM Singh says
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The probe has a "small launch window" in November 2013
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India has been launching satellites since 1975
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It plans to launch a manned space mission in 2016
Indian Space Research Organization
The goal of the mission is to search for clues to the "geology, origin, evolution and sustainability of life" on Mars, according to an @placeholder report published earlier this year.