India's first interplanetary mission ‘Mangalyaan’ completed
100 days around Mars on Jan 2, 2015 after it entered the Red Planet's orbit in
September 2014. The spacecraft is now circling the red planet in an
orbit whose nearest point to Mars (periapsis) is at 421.7 km and farthest point
(apoapsis) at 76,993.6 km. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes 72 hours 51
minutes 51 seconds to go round the Mars once.
The Mars Orbiter launched on November 5, 2013
onboard ISRO's PSLV C25 from Sriharikota entered the Martian orbit on September
24, 2014 after a nine-month long odyssey, making India the first country in the
world to succeed in such inter-planetary mission in the maiden attempt itself.
Since then, the spacecraft has been sending data,
including pictures of the terrain of the Red planet to Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO), which are being received at Bangalore and being sent to Space
Application Centre and Physical Research Laboratory, both located at Ahmedabad
for analysis.
The Mars Orbiter was also lucky to capture the coma
of comet 'Siding Spring' with the a colour camera on board for over 40 minutes
as it made an appearance near the Red planet on October 19 last year.
The 1,350kg weighing (on Earth) craft has also taken
pictures of one of the two Martian moons -- Phobos, while it was travelling
west to east over Mars in its typical orbit.
Some of the pictures it took include the regional
dust storm activities over northern hemisphere of Mars, full disc image of the
planet, showing Elysium - the second largest volcanic province on the natural
satellite.
The first set of pictures of Mars sent by the
orbiter from space was presented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a day after
the spacecraft entered the Martian orbit.
The Rs.450-crore Mars mission is the cheapest inter-
planetary mission embarked on by any country. European, American and Russian
probes have managed to orbit or land on the planet but after several attempts.
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