"Namaste" was the first greeting tweeted by @MarsCuriousity to the Indian @MarsOrbiter when it successfully reached orbit around Mars on Sept. 24.
The Mars veteran had been on the Red Planet's surface for two years and congratulated the first Indian interplanetary mission to Mars, which arrived just two days after NASA's latest orbiter, Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), did.
India's Mars Orbiter Mission, otherwise known as MOM or Mangalyaan in its home country, replied, "Howdy!" to the friendly tweet, adding, "I'll be around."
Howdy @MarsCuriosity ? Keep in touch. I'll be around.
— ISRO's Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
The amusing exchange was one of the first tweets on the account of ISRO's Mar's Orbiter, which has catapulted India into the history of interplanetary missions.
According to reports, Mangalyaan cost a mere $74 million to make and was launched successfully on its maiden voyage from the Bay of Bengal on Nov. 5, 2013. By comparison, the launch services of NASA's Maven orbiter alone cost $187 million. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were able to successfully launch and orbit Mars on their first tries.
India is the fourth country to send a mission to Mars, and the first Asian representative. Previously, a Chinese satellite that was being carried by a Russian mission failed in 2011. Japan's efforts to orbit the Red Planet in 1998 also did not come to fruition.
Observers said that Mangalyaan is, first, a show of technology for India and, only second, a scientific research mission. Mangalyaan has five scientific instruments on board to help scientists take colored photographs of the planet, study the atmosphere by gathering data about methane levels in the air and map the surface with a spectrometer.
The orbiter is expected to continue data collecting efforts for at least six months, after which its battery will run out and it will plunge out of orbit.
India's K Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said that the Mars Orbiter Mission was a "natural progression" for India, which has been an underdog in the space race for five decades. Their first successful unmanned misson to the moon in 2008 brought back the first evidence of lunar water.
