The Mars Orbiter that catapulted India to space history has quietly had its second birthday - in its orbit around the red planet.
On September 24, 2014, India became the only nation to date to put a spacecraft around the planet in its very first attempt.
The debut achievement of making the spacecraft go round the planet was the most challenging manouevre of the mission. It eluded old planetary warhorses Russia, the U.S. and Europe, who started out into space 50 years back with superior rockets.
Originally designed to last just six months on its onboard fuel, the orbiter continues to scan the red planet elliptically from a distance of around 400 km x 70,000 km.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the orbiter still sends interesting photos and information to Indian data keepers across millions of kilometre.
To mark the two years, ISRO released archive data up to September 2015 for collaborators and public, who responded to its earlier announcement.
"Rest of the data sets will be released every six months" as is customary in planetary research, it said. "The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) completed two years around Mars on September 24, 2016 and has accomplished its planned mission objectives. MOM and all its scientific payloads are in good health and it continues to provide valuable data of the Mars surface and its atmosphere," ISRO said.
279 users
Until Sunday, the Indian Space Science Data Centre in Bengaluru counted 279 users of Mars data, who have made a total of 976 downloads, said an ISRO spokesman. As many as 32 teams (apart from project investigators) from Indian research institutes and universities are working on MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) projects.
MOM set out from Sriharikota on November 5, 2013, travelled 300 days across hundreds of million kilometres, halfway across Sun, to meet Mars. The extended life has helped scientists make more observations of Mars from its five instruments and study the seasons better.
Adventures and accolades
It has sent colourful images of the Martian terrain, valleys and hills from different distances.
It survived eclipses of the Sun and loss of contact with Earth for several days last year. It underwent a whiteout in May on the sunny side. It even ducked and clicked when Comet Siding Spring visited Mars early on. The rare comet's dust was feared to damage the sensitive instruments on the spacecraft.
"MOM is built with full autonomy to take care of itself" for long periods and such situations, ISRO said.
At a time space-faring nations are exploring low-cost ways to reach space, the Rs. 450-crore MOM has been hailed as the most economical interplanetary mission.
An ISRO-MOM team won the U.S. National Space Society’s Space Pioneer Award for 2015. ISRO also won the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for promoting international cooperation in peaceful use of outer space.
Message from Mars
• Images of land from the Mars Colour Camera indicate presence of aqueous activity in the planet's ancient climate.
• They have given a better understanding of the ice cover changes especially the onset of summer in its northern hemisphere.
• Dust layers and patterns of around 1.5 km were estimated at the hills and valleys there.
• Using the MOM colour camera and NASA's high resolution mineralogical data helped identify sulphates and iron compounds on the surface.
• New details from imaging of Mars's two natural satellites - Phobos and Deimos.
• ISRO has published a collage or atlas of the images from MOM.
