June 20, 2017: Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also called Mangalyaan completes 1000 Earth days in its orbit today. The interplanetary mission of ISRO was launched on 5th November, 2013. It was inserted into Martian orbit on 24th September, 2014 in its first attempt.
The Mars Orbiter Mission credited with many laurels like cost-effectiveness, short period of realisation, miniaturisation of five heterogeneous science payloads completed 1000 Earth days which corresponds to 973.25 Martian Solar day. Mangalyaan has completed 388 orbits of Mars and the satellite is in good health and continues to work as expected.Scientific analysis of the data received from the Mars Orbiter spacecraft is in progress.
ISRO has already launched Announcement of Opportunity programmes for researchers in the country to use Mangalyaan’s data for R&D. The Mars Colour Camera, one of the scientific payloads onboard Mangalyaan, has produced more than 715 images so far.An orbital manoeuvre was performed on the spacecraft to avoid the impending long eclipse duration for the satellite. About 20 kg propellant was consumed for manoeuvres leaving another 13 kg of propellant for its further mission life.
(AIR NEWS)
