Re: India conquer Martian space!!!
First of all, there is no prominent region of our solar system that has already not been covered. I know that fly by missions do not send back as much of data as an orbital or landing missions, but still Voyager 1 and 2 pretty much took care of all the planets, and Jupiter and Saturn moons are also visited through several missions.
Sending a mission to Mars by India may not look very value added - as Mars is already pretty well covered through dozens of missions, including the rover missions - but it sends a very strong signal to the rest of the world about the country’s capabilities, especially from defense point of view. When NASA sent a rocket to the moon, its intention was less to learn about the moon, and more to tell USSR (remember that it was a cold war era) that if we can target the moon from 240000 miles away and hit it with pinpoint precision, we can send a nuclear warhead to Kremlin with even greater ease.
India is a nuclear power, and they showed it to the whole world through the famous Smiling Buddha test in 1974, but what good that warhead is if you can’t mount it on a decent rocket and send it on its way to Islamabad or Beijing. So targeted space missions are the next show offs of the nuclear capable countries. It’s a subtle threat, hidden behind a scientific mission.