India Mars mission finishes mid-course correction

NEW DELHI - India's maiden Mars mission, called Mangalyaan, successfully completed its first mid-course correction Wednesday morning, a senior official of the state-owned space agency said.

"The mid-course correction was done some 2.9 million km away from Earth. The spacecraft was first re-oriented and then its smaller rockets fired to make the operation successful," the official of the Indian Space Research Organization said.

Mangalyaan has now entered an uncharted territory for the space agency as no Indian spacecraft has ever traveled so far away, he added.

India launched its first mission to the Red Planet this November, which is likely to reach its destination in September 2014.