NASA keen on sharing 'Mars data' with India's Mangalyaan mission

NASA has recently stated that they are ready to share their data, observed by the Maven spacecraft, with India, whose Mars Orbiter Mission would arrive around 48 hours earlier on Mars.

Dr Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said that NASA was really quite interested in cooperating and correlating data-sets, the BBC reported.

After both spacecrafts get into the orbit and the scientists understand their data, those opportunities would open up, he further added.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, informally known as Mangalyaan has slightly different objectives from the America's probe and one important atmospheric study it would try to make would be an observation of methane, a potential indicator of biological activity on the planet.

This would be the first inter planetary mission for India, and if it's successful, then the country would actually achieve victory in the fields of science and technology. It would face its first test on September 22, when the main liquid engine of the spacecraft has been expected to fire for about four seconds.