Just a few days after the arrival of MAVEN, NASA’s latest mars atmospheric testing satellite, India is preparing to plant an orbiter of their own. After 300 days and 420 miles in transit the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is scheduled to arrive on the morning of September 24.

Once MOM is in the right position, the team behind it needs to fire its onboard rocket for 24 minutes to slow the space craft and allow it to go into orbit. If the rocket does not slow down sufficiently it could speed past Mars and be lost in space. If, on the other hand, it slows too much the gravitational pull will be too strong and it will crash into the planet’s surface.

“India will become the first Asian country to have achieved this and if it happens in the maiden attempt itself, India could become the first country in the world to have reached distant Mars on its own steam in the first attempt,” said ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan to the BBC’s Pallava Bagla.

Since 1960, 51 missions to Mars have been launched internationally. Of those missions, 42% have failed. The United States, Japan, Russia and China all failed in their first attempt.

If India is successful however, other space agencies may want to talk with ISRO’s team. The MOM mission has cost just $74 million. As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pointed out on a June 30 visit to India’s rocket port, the mission is less expensive than the making of the film Gravity.

If the spacecraft is successfully placed into orbit, it will spend six months sending photos and atmospheric information back to researchers in India. MOM is specifically looking for the presence of methane gas in mars atmosphere which can be an indicator of life.

Updates on the mission can be found at isro.org.