Summaries

Synopsis

After the failed launch of GSLV-F06 on 25 December 2010, due to a small mistake by Project Director Tara Shinde (Vidya Balan), Rakesh Dhawan (Akshay Kumar), a fellow scientist working with her, takes the blame for her. As a result, he is relocated to work on Mangalyaan as punishment. The MoM (Mars Orbiter Mission) is thought of as an impossible mission by his coworkers due its aim of reaching Mars with its tight budget.The new GSLV missions are given to Rupert Desai (Dalip Tahil), an ex-NASA scientist of Indian origin. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is thought of as an impossible mission by his coworkers due to its aim of reaching Mars with its tight budget.

Rupert Desai is the ex-NASA director and has been hired by ISRO to consult its strategic approach. Rupert advises borrowing technology from NASA and avoiding duplicating tech in ISRO, but Rakesh is staunchly against that, and advocates make in India. ISRO Director Shrikant Bhosle (Vikram Gokhale) is a balanced person and takes Rakesh's idea into due consideration.Tara is also caught up at home between constant feuds between her husband Sunil (Sanjay Kapoor) and her son Dilip (Rohan Joshi), the latter showing an interest in his namesake A. R. Rahman and Islam. Dilip has another interest in the Mars Mission.

Tara, meanwhile, joins a new and better team. Rakesh then learns that MoM cannot take off on the PSLV since the available technology has a payload of only 1500 kg and not enough fuel to fire the rocket to be carried to a distance of almost 5.5*10^7 kilometers. GSLV, if it had succeeded, could have taken the satellite to Mars as it had a payload of 2.3*10^3 kg. However, recent significant failures of GSLV have jeopardized the planned future missions.

Back at home, Tara is badly caught in between balancing her career and her family. One day at home, while frying 'Puris', Tara's maid informs of insufficient gas to cook all the 'Puris', to which Tara tells her to heat the oil and turn off the gas and turn it back on if oil cools down. Which sparks her an idea to launch the MoM using PSLV. She approaches Rakesh with the idea, who is convinced. The duo tries to get the other team members on board, but instead are mocked, though they later are convinced too along with Director of ISRO.

The Director likes Rakesh's plan and asks Rupert to provide him and Tara a team. Rupert doesn't give them his best people, but a bunch of juniors, who are considered newbies in their own right.

Eka Gandhi (Sonakshi Sinha), who is the propulsion control expert, is introduced as a youngster that hates most Indian things and looks for the first chance to get away to NASA.Spacecraft autonomy designer Neha Siddiqui (Kirti Kulhari), who is struggling with rejection as a result of her inter-communal background despite her divorce while trying hard to find a house.Also, there's the navigation expert Krittika Agarwal (Taapsee Pannu), who is a devoted wife that tends to her ex-serviceman husband Rishi Agarwal (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), who was severely wounded in action.Varsha Pillai (Nithya Menen), the satellite designer and payload expert, battles with her mother-in-law's taunts at home for not being able to bear a child.Parmeshwar (Sharman Joshi) is the payload specialist who believes in astrology and is told to keep away from "Mangal" if he wants to get married. He is a virgin. He decides to stay in the Mars mission team as he is smitten with Eka, who basically is "easy" and sleeps around.Ananth Iyengar (H. G. Dattatreya)- the team's structural engineer, who is trying to complete his pilgrimage to Tirumala with his wife.

However, after the announcement of India's second Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, the mission's budget is cut by 50% to Rs 400 Crores. In between the tight schedule and minuscule budget, Tara and Rakesh continue to work on their MoM project by making several compromises. But they are assigned some experienced specialists to buttress their young team.

Kritika abruptly abandons her duties without informing the duo upon learning that Rishi has been severely wounded in action. Tara and Rakesh realize that the rest of the junior scientists working on the project have low morale and motivation to make this mission happen, leading to the team slowing down.Tara soon realizes that in order to meet their budget and schedule, she must make the team members change their attitudes and motivate them to make their dream jobs into a reality. An attempt on her part to pacify her worried husband, Sunil by tracing their daughter Anya, who hasn't arrived home yet, to a night club, eventually culminates in Sunil warming up to the party environment as he throws a comment about nostalgia.

This strikes an idea in Tara's head, and the next day, she successfully motivates the team members by reminding them of their childhood passion for science, and they put all their hard-work and energy into resolving the issues with the mission to make it happen.

Meanwhile, even as Kritika returns on being reminded by Rishi that she has a duty towards her country too, just like him, Varsha happens to be pregnant and soon delivers a child, for whom the team makes arrangements at the office itself, while Neha is warmly taken in by Ananth and his wife into their house (where Ananth helps her move on with her troubled past as a wife).

The team reduces satellite weight by using a plastic aluminum composite. After a lot of flak, Eka finds a way to get to Mars with 850 kg of fuel. she deletes her application to NASA. The frugality continues when Tara suggests borrowing equipment from Chandrayaan-2 (which has been delayed) to save MoM mission costs.

The MoM satellite is finally launched on PSLV on 5 November 2013 and is named Mangalyaan (Sanskrit: Mars-Craft) and is successfully inserted into Earth's orbit. Rakesh and his team celebrate the successful launch. However, while doing the sixth orbit-raising maneuver, the jets fail to launch, pushing the mission 6 days behind.Rupert mocks the team, while Tara continues to keep hope that something will happen. Couple months later, on the way to Mars, the satellite is hit by a solar radiation wave, heavily damaging the communication systems of the satellite.

When the team manages to regain communications, they realize that the solar radiation had increased the speed of the satellite and pushed it further, making up the 6 day gap they had incurred while doing the orbital maneuvers with Earth. After spending a 298-day transit to Mars, MOM satellite is inserted into Mars orbit on 24 September 2014, making India the 4th country in the world to do so and the first country to do it in the first attempt.