India's journey to Mars and Beyond in new book

A proposal for India's ambitious Mars Mission was sent to the government only after the Chinese Mission failed in November 2011, the news of the cabinet approval to the same was kept under wraps for the then PM Manmohan Singh to reveal it in his Independence Day speech, and former ISRO chief U R Rao had preferred a Mercury Mission over the Mars Mission.
These are a just a few insights that a new book describing the country's journey to the red planet has to offer.
Penned by scribe-writer duo of Pallava Bagla and his wife Subhadra Menon, the book "Reaching for the Stars: India's Journey to Mars and Beyond" encompasses the saga of Indian space ambition with a vivid account of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in particular.

Bagla said he had the rare privilege of witnessing India's Mars Mission from close.
Describing the never-say-die attitude of ISRO along with what goes behind-the-scene action, the geo-politics of the space missions and the Asian space race, the book gives an overall view of India's space ambition through the eyes of a journalist.
The book contains the story about the launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission, Indian Space Research Organization's (Isro's) first interplanetary mission to Mars with an unmanned spacecraft designed to orbit the Red Planet in an elliptical orbit.