Here's why Ekta Kapoor's Mars Mission show poster featured wrong rocket

The poster of Ekta Kapoor’s recently announced web series ''M.O.M - Mission Over Mars'' — inspired by the story the women behind India’s successful Mangalyaan mission—featured the wrong space rocket.

In a tweet last week, Kapoor announced the launch of the show that revolves around the story of four women scientists who were involved in India’s Mars Orbiter Mission launched in 2013. Actors Sakshi Tanwar, Mona Singh, Nidhi Singh and Palomi Ghosh star in the show for ALTBalaji streaming platform. The poster features what appears to be a Russian Soyuz launch vehicle, superimposed with the Indian flag.

ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, on the other hand, was launched aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25. Some Twitter users spotted the gaffe and criticised the showrunners’ apparent lack of research into the subject before the poster launch.

Digital platform ALTBalaji has now clarified that the image of rocket used in the poster of their upcoming web series M.O.M – Mission Over Mars was taken for “representation purposes purely”. In an official statement, they said, ''Our upcoming show is a fictional adaptation of the real life heroes at ISRO who worked on Mangalyaan and set a major milestone putting India firmly on the global map. However, as a strategic call taken by multiple parties, we have gone down the fiction route for this show. Additionally, we are legally bound not to use actual names or images of either the people, objects or agencies involved. Keeping in mind our contractual obligations, publicity material of the show was designed.”

'MOM' was India’s first interplanetary mission. The launch made ISRO the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency. India is also the first nation in the world to have successfully placed a probe in Mars orbit in its first attempt.