NEW DELHI: 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 -- features 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 criticised the poster: "The fact that the poster uses the wrong rocket is already a big flag," one user tweeted. "Could it be that they didn't have a single expert as a consultant for this series?" another user wrote.
However, in a statement, ALTBalaji on Wednesday, clarified that the image of the rocket used in the poster was taken for "representation purposes purely".
It 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.”
"To avoid giving an incorrect impression that this is a docu-drama, we have chosen not to use actual names of either the people or agencies involved. This imagery was taken for representation purposes purely, as a part of which, publicity material of the show has its own sensibilities to consider," the statement from ALTBalaji read.
In her tweet on June 6, Ekta Kapoor wrote that she had decided to make the show two-and-half years ago when she chanced upon the "amazing story about women in Indian science." The series is "part-fiction, part real story" based on the achievements of all the women in Indian science.
"This show is on the women who sent the mission on Mars -- partly fictional keeping in mind the sacrosanct nature of ISRO," she wrote. According to her tweet, the show was being presented after "millions of meetings with ISRO" and would maintain a "certain amount of sacrosanct secrecy".
'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.
(With online desk inputs)