Mangalyaan reached the Martian orbit on September 24 as scheduled and India became the first Asian country to successfully complete its maiden Mars mission. These missions had provided large amount of data on various scientific aspects of the Mars. Over 100 images from a collection of 350 acquired by the Mars Colour Camera on the spacecraft have been compiled in a form of a scientific atlas.
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“The Martian is far more realistic and screening it was our way of congratulating the scientists on the first anniversary of the Mars Orbiter Mission”.
On November 5, ISRO will launch a book named “Fishing Hamlet to Mars” to mark the anniversary of the successful Mars Orbiter Mission launch, which gave a fillip to Indian space technology.
While a large set of data has already been acquired by the five payloads of the Mars Orbiter Mission, the Isro now expects the mission’s life to stretch several years, against the initial estimate of six months.
This possibly refers to the Mangalyaan recording signals of the presence of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere. NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are also eyeing the planet from above, as is the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe. India scripted space history when it successfully placed its Mars spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet on its very first attempt.
The Space Applications Centre, (ISRO), Ahmedabad, has brought out the Mars Atlas which contains a compilation of images acquired by Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and results obtained by other payload results, the space agency said.
MOM and MAVEN, which seeks to determine how fast Mars’ atmosphere is being lost to space, are not the only operational spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. The stunning images sent by MOM include the full disc of the red planet along with its biggest volcano and deep valleys.
According to AS Kiran Kumar, the chairperson of ISRO, MOM will orbit Mars for more years than previously estimated.
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Earlier in March, MOM’s life was extended for another six months due to surplus fuel.
