Mars Orbiter Mission completes 2 years around Mars

The country's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has completed two years around Mars. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said that the mission has accomplished its planned mission objectives.

At present, the MOM and all its scientific payloads are in good health and it continues to provide valuable data regarding the planet's surface and its atmosphere.

After a 300 days journey in deep space, on September 24, 2014, India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft has successfully entered into an elliptical orbit around planet Mars. With successful Mars orbit insertion, Isro had became the fourth space agency to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars orbit and India became the first country in the world to do so in its first attempt.

On September 24, 2016, the MOM completed two years around Mars. Isro said that the increased duration of observation of Mars by five scientific payloads is enhancing the planetary science data and also enabling coverage of Mars in different seasons.

The images of Mars captured by the Mars Colour Camera (MCC) have been received and found to be of very good quality and the camera has so far produced hundreds of images for various landforms of the Martian surface, indicating the presence of aqueous activity on Mars in climatic history. The Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, Lyman Alpha Photometer, and Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser have collected ample data sets.

MOM's MCC data has helped us in understating the sublimation process on the Martian north pole, where CO2 & H2O ice cover changes significantly as Mars enters into northern hemisphere summer, said Isro.

The dust patterns around high altitude regions and in Valleys were also studied and the mean height of dust layer was estimated to be 1.5 km. Albedo using the 1.65 micron studies of the reference channel of MSM was also estimated, said Isro.

Joint morphological studies using MCC and the high resolution mineralogical data with NASA's CRISM data has been carried out, which enables the identification of different minerals like sulphates and ferrous-based compounds on the surface of Mars.

Imaging of the two Moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, by the MOM have revealed new details about these moons.