SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 17 September 2025, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 24 of 99

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What is India's first successful interplanetary mission?

(a)Chandrayaan-1
(b)Mangalyaan
(c)Gaganyaan
(d)Aditya-L1

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Mangalyaan, ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission, was India's first interplanetary mission.

It lifted off on PSLV-C25 from Sriharikota on 5 November 2013 and entered Mars orbit on 24 September 2014, after a 298-day transit. So option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Chandrayaan-1 — Chandrayaan-1 (2008) was India's first lunar probe. The Moon is Earth's own satellite, not a planet, so a lunar mission is not interplanetary.
(c)
Gaganyaan — Gaganyaan is India's crewed orbital spacecraft, designed to carry astronauts to low Earth orbit. It is not built to travel to another planet.
(d)
Aditya-L1 — Aditya-L1 (2023) studies the Sun from a halo orbit around the Sun–Earth L1 point, about 1.5 million km from Earth. That is not a journey to another planet.

Concept

An interplanetary mission leaves Earth's neighbourhood and travels to another planet.

MOM spent about a month in Earth orbit raising its apogee, fired for trans-Mars injection at 00:49 IST on 1 December 2013, then cruised 298 days to Mars.

It made ISRO the fourth space agency to reach Mars orbit, after the Soviet space programme, NASA and the European Space Agency, and India the first Asian nation to do so.

Key facts

Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan): launched 5 November 2013 on PSLV-C25, entered Mars orbit 24 September 2014.
It made ISRO the fourth space agency to reach Mars orbit, after the Soviet programme, NASA and ESA.
Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar probe, was launched on 22 October 2008 on PSLV-C11.
Aditya-L1, India's first mission dedicated to the Sun, launched on 2 September 2023 and was inserted at L1 on 6 January 2024.

Study next

Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3, India's later lunar missionsLagrange points and why Aditya-L1 sits at L1Gaganyaan and the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme

Common traps

Picking Chandrayaan-1 because it came first, in 2008, when it went to the Moon, which is not a planet.
Counting Aditya-L1 as interplanetary because it studies the Sun from 1.5 million km away.

Here the mission is asked by its 'first' label.

The same fact is asked at 22 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.1, keyed Mangalyaan (Mars Orbiter Mission) from the same four missions.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: General Policy — all 308 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.