Mars Orbiter Mission completes one year

• MOM was in news recently as the spacecraft has successfully completed one year around the Red planet.
• During the entire one year, the spacecraft had acquired a large set of data of the red planet using all five payloads mounted on it by completing more than 120 orbits.
• Indian Space Research Organisation released the Mars Atlas to mark the feat of the Orbiter.
• It contains a compilation of images acquired by Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and results obtained by other payload in a form of scientific atlas.

About Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)

• The Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, is India’s first planetary mission to explore Mars and was designed, built and launched in a record period of less than two years.
• Mangalyaan is indigenously designed, built and launched by ISRO in record period of less than two years in 450 crore rupees (73 million US dollars) budget which is considered as cheapest inter-planetary mission till date to reach Mars.
• The spacecraft has five instruments mounted on it for collecting scientific data of Mar’s morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature, surface geology and atmospheric escape process.
• These five instruments are Lyman-Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS) and Mars Colour Camera (MCC).
• The MOM spacecraft had entered into the orbit of Mars on the night of 23 September 2014 after it was launched on 5 November 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre using a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25.
• Only 21 of the total of 51 missions sent to Mars by various countries have been successful before MOM.
• European Space Agency (ESA) of European consortium, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the US and Roscosmos of Russia are the only three other agencies which had so far sent their missions to Mars.

The Mars mission of the ISRO is aimed at establishing the country’s capability to reach the red planet and focus on looking for the presence of methane, an indicator of life in Mars.

By: Vishal