“The spacecraft crossed the half-way mark Wednesday at 9.50am on its journey to Mars,” the Indian Space Research Organisation said in a statement from the southern city of Bangalore.

“The spacecraft and its five scientific instruments are in good health.”

The gold-coloured probe, the size of a small car, will aim to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form on the fourth planet from the Sun.

The country has never before attempted inter-planetary travel, and more than half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China’s in 2011 and Japan’s in 2003.

The low-cost Mars Orbiter Mission, known as “Mangalyaan” in India, was revealed in August 2012 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, shortly after China’s attempt flopped.

NASA has also launched a spacecraft to Mars, on a mission to study how the air on the planet has changed over time, and is also expected to reach its destination in September.

India’s mission cost 4.5 billion rupees ($75 million), a fraction of the cost of the US unmanned MAVEN spacecraft at $671 million.

n  The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.

The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less than 10 per cent larger than Earth, but its mass, composition and density are not known.

Previous research suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.

Prior to this discovery, the “record holder” for the most “Earth-like” planet went to Kepler-62f, which is 40 per cent larger than Earth and orbits in its star’s habitable zone.

Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days and receives one-third the energy that Earth does from the sun, placing it near the outer edge of the habitable zone.

If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon would appear as bright as our sun is about an hour before sunset on Earth.

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half the size and mass of the sun.

The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds.

So, does this planet Kepler-186f have inhabitants like us who war and kill in the name of diverse and ridiculous gods? Do they have antagonistic leaders constantly sniping and fighting?

There are now 1800 known planets but this is the first one similar to Earth and in the habitable or “Goldilocks” zone. 

Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.