THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

On their first try at Mars, the Indian Space Agency has put a spacecraft into Mars orbit. And it did it at a cost far less than Hollywood would expend on a movie about the same thing.

An Indian spacecraft affectionately nicknamed MOM reached Mars orbit on Wednesday, beating India’s Asian rivals to the Red Planet and outdoing the Americans, the Soviets and the Europeans in doing so on a maiden voyage and a shoestring budget.

An ebullient Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on hand at the Indian Space Research Organization’s command center in Bangalore for the early-morning event and hailed it “as a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation.”

“The odds were stacked against us,” Mr. Modi, wearing a red Nehru vest, said in a televised news conference. “When you are trying to do something that has not been attempted before, it is a leap into the unknown. And space is indeed the biggest unknown out there.”

Children across India were asked to come to school by 6:45 a.m. Wednesday, well before the usual starting time, to watch the historic event on state television.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, was intended mostly to prove that India could succeed in such a highly technical endeavor — and to beat China. As Mr. Modi and others have noted, India’s trip to Mars, at a price of $74 million, cost less than the Hollywood movie “Gravity.” NASA’s almost simultaneous — and far more complex — mission to Mars cost $671 million...

The Indian Space Research Organization has always had a small budget, and for years it largely worked in international isolation after many countries cut off technological sharing programs in the wake of Indian nuclear tests. It has launched more than 50 satellites since 1975, including five foreign satellites in one June launch. As other countries have rethought their pricey space programs, India’s low-budget affair has gained increasing attention and orders.

Its success has long been seen as a fulfillment of the kind of state-sponsored self-sufficiency that former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru cherished but that, in the main, left India impoverished.

More recently, India’s technological isolation in defense and other areas has been due in large part to the country’s restrictions on foreign investments, its poor infrastructure and its infamous bureaucracy. India is now the world’s largest importer of arms because of its inability to make its own equipment and its refusal to let foreign companies open plants owned entirely by them.

Congratulations are in order and I will refrain from making any jokes about opening up a whole new world for convenience stores and motels.