Add to that the fuel for the launch vehicle; and fuel for the the cruise stage.
I can't trust this article.
Putting a satellite in orbit around another planet is still a non-trivial exercise, but while $90 million is probably a low-ball figure it's not a totally unreasonable one.
If you take into account cheaper labor, I could imagine India coming in considerably lower than that, though I'm not sure how much lower. They could probably also save some money by using existing, already-proven technology, e.g. by purchasing some ex-Soviet designs and equipment rather than developing all custom hardware+software. That said, I would be very surprised if this launches on-budget and on-schedule.
What you've just said is the equivalent of someone witnessing a Ferrari crash into a tree and destroy itself, and saying 'Ouch, that's an expensive tank of fuel he's just wasted'.
In fact the costs of fuel for these things are trivially small, basically inconsequential, compared to the cost of the things that are using the fuel - the rocket and the cruise stage. You don't get them back, they're single use, expended as part of the mission, and they're expensive.
The price per kg of LOX, LH2 etc. all seem fairly low to me, a quick search gives:
If ISRO can pull it off for under $100 million, that would be quite an achievement. Given the recent commercial interests in space, there might even be an opportunity to become financially independent by offering services for others.
http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/index.php?id=29335&L=1
It's also much smaller -- this article puts the weight of the Mars orbiter at 500 kg total, vs. 1,380 for Chandrayaan-1.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/09/india-s...
For example, check the projections on the James Webb space telescope and see for yourself how the costs doubled and tripled. IMO we shouldn't look at it in terms of those costs; even if double and tripled they are not that high. Look at their effect on the larger picture.
"The project was scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).The project was not completed, however, until December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars) as of 2006. The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it will not be paid off until 2038."
And for an orbiter around Mars (like the article said), solar is probably the better choice anyway. I love nuclear power and nuclear propulsion, but it's often overkill. If we knew as much as we did now about Spirit and Opportunity we might have used solar for the MSL mission.