Congrats to India's Mars Orbiter

This week India joined a rare club: they successfully guided a robotic probe to Mars, marking the first time an Asian country has done so and the first country to make the trip successfully on the first attempt. Here's a video from CNN with more details:

Two important notes on the subject: India managed to successfully get this robot to Mars, on its own, for around $74 million. That's just slightly more than Dawn of the Planet of the Apes made on its opening day back in July, and far less than it or other popular movies cost to make. That figure belies the myth that space exploration must be a costly drag on the economy: as a professor in college used to advice us, we need to "work smarter, not harder," in order to reach the stars.

Second, India's space agency definitely knows how to engage the current public. There's a Twitter account for the Orbiter that's very playful; no one else had to create a snarky account for it. The Orbiter's Facebook Page has a good blend of actual facts/data and social content, complete with memes and sharable images. Other explorers take note: this is how you get the public interested in space.