Earlier this year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully soft-landed Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar south pole in what was a major leap forward for Indian space exploration. Another such leap was taken exactly nine years ago, on September 24, 2014, when the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), informally referred to as Mangalyaan, successfully entered into orbit around the Red Planet. This was India’s first tryst with interplanetary travel and a somewhat unlikely success — prior to ISRO, no other space agency had successfully managed to orbit the Red Planet in its first attempt. Moreover, ISRO became just the fourth space…