 "Side-stepping comets and starring on Time: 100 awesome days of Isro's MoM")
India’s Mars orbiter Mission, (MoM) has been in the Martian Orbit for 100 days now, transmitting data and images back to Isro. The Orbiter was launched on 24 September and made history for India after it became the first ever space mission to enter Martian orbit on its maiden attempt. And it has been quite an eventful time for MoM. Here are some of the things it has been up to since its launch: It spotted Phobos During its orbit, MoM spotted and took photos of Phobos - one of the two moons that orbits Mars. Not bad for a first time star gazer! Check out their Facebook post and images:
Post by ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission .
It side-stepped a comet
Isro had to reposition MoM in Martian Orbit to avoid Siding Spring - a comet the size of a small mountain - which whizzed past Mars at breakneck speed. To give you some perspective, the comet came within a paltry 140,006 kilometers of the planet at a speed of 202,767 kmph. There were a few nervous moments for all of us until the comet passed, but it ended well, and MoM seemed quite excited about it:
It made Time magazine… twice There’s no doubt it. Mangalyaan is an international star. And this was cemented when it made it to Time Magazine not once but twice. First, one of its images was published by the magazine and later, it was named one of the 25 best inventions of 2014. “Nobody gets Mars right on the first try. The US didn’t, Russia didn’t, the Europeans didn’t. But on September 24, India did. That’s when the Mangalyaan… went into orbit around the Red Planet, a technological feat no other Asian nation has yet achieved,” Time said about Mangalyaan, calling it “The Supersmart Spacecraft.” Nice. It has been quite the shutter bug The mission statement of Mangalyaan, according to Isro, is to explore and observe Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy and the Martian atmosphere. It will also specifically search for methane in the Martian atmosphere as a means of obtaining information about the possibility or the past existence of life on the planet. Mangalyaan got to work soon after successfully entering Martian orbit, sending an image of the Martian surface back to headquarters. Since then it has sent back a number of images, including one that captured regional dust storms on Mars, as well as an image of Earth. It won social media MoM’s Twitter account has been, in a word, awesome. MoM is witty, informative, uses hash tags, tweets out images and infographics and interacts with other Twitter handles. Its Facebook page is also interesting, engaging and fun. In fact any one new to Twitter (We’re looking at you Mamata Banerjee) would do well to get a few social media pointers from MoM!