Mars Orbiter Mission

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully placed its unmanned Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft to the Martian orbit, to study the planet’s atmosphere and identify presence of methane.

Successful orbit insertion comes after Nasa’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft reached the orbit earlier this week.

With this development, India has become the first Asian country to reach the red planet on its first attempt, and joins a group of nations, including the US, Europe and Russia that have sent missions to Mars.

Called Mangalyaan, the MOM at $74m is considered one of the cheapest interplanetary of missions.

The spacecraft blasted-off on-board a PSLV-C25 into an orbit of 250km X 23,550km around Earth on 5 November 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR Sriharikota in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

"India has become the first Asian country to reach the red planet on its first attempt."

Since then, it was subjected to series of manoeuvres and short burns of its rocket engines to send it towards Mars.

Commenting on the latest development, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "We have dared to reach out into the unknown. And have achieved the near impossible.

"History has been created today. The odds were stacked against us. Of the 51 missions attempted across the world so far, a mere 21 had succeeded. But we have prevailed."

The 1,337kg-orbiter will now accumulate scientific data that will assist scientists in studying Martian weather systems.

It carries instruments on its payload, including Mars colour camera, thermal infrared imaging spectrometer, methane sensor for Mars, Mars exospheric neutral composition analyser and Lyman alpha photometer.

Image: An artistic rendering of the MOM orbiting Mars. Photo: courtesy of Nesnad.

Defence Technology