Bangalore, Aug 31 - India will embark on an unmanned mission to Mars after 2015 to explore the red planet in quest of its space ambitions, a senior space official said Monday.

Clarifying the statement made by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair at Panaji earlier in the day on the Mars mission, the space official said such a mission was not feasible before 2015 as the space agency will be pre-occupied with its second lunar mission (Chandrayaan-2) in 2013 and a manned mission to space by 2015.

'We plan to undertake missions to Mars and other planets as part of our long-term space expeditions. We will ask the scientific community to propose the experiments to be carried on the Martian surface. We may also invite international space agencies to participate in the mission, as in Chandryaan-1,' the official told IANS but declined to be named.

As the fourth planet from the sun in the solar system, the distance between earth and Mars varies from 36 million miles when nearest, to 250 million miles when farthest in its elliptical orbit around the sun.

Though the government Aug 13 sanctioned Rs.100 million (Rs.10 crore) as seed funding for the Mars mission, a lot of ground work has to be done for preparing the project report.

'The mission to Mars is being conceived as low-cost planetary missions. For instance, Chandrayaan-1 is the finest example of a low-cost mission, as we were able accomplish it at a cost of $80 million (Rs.380 crore) while such missions by other space agencies are considered low-cost at $500 million,' the official claimed.

To prepare a project report for government approval, the space agency will elicit the opinion of the scientific community on the viability of such a mission and evolve a concept paper.