Mars Mission hits it off on social media

MOM's new twitter handle gets over 34,000 followers in a few hours

Indian Space Research Organisation's mission to communicate through social media was as successful as its entry into the Martian orbit.

 

Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director at Facebook India, told Business Standard in en email reply that Isro's Mars Orbiter Mission successfully leveraged Facebook and ensured that millions of people were regularly updated on the mission.
 

The social networking site said that Isro's Mars Orbiter Mission has been trending on Facebook for the past three days. The top trending hashtags included #ISRO, #Mangalyaan, #MarsMission, #wakeup4marsorbiter.

Isro, which has been active on Facebook since the mission was launched on November 5, reported substantial jump in page likes on Facebook. Its page likes rocketed from 1,30,000 fans on September 14 more than quadrupled to 5,74,000 on September 23. Likes for Isro's Mars Orbiter Mission Page increased from 3,37,000 on September 14 to nearly 4,45,000 on September 23. 

Facebook said that the top post on both these pages about MOM successfully entering the Martian Orbit reached over 1 million people in the first two hours and received over 1,47,000 likes, comments and shares.

Impressive as those numbers are, the US space agency NASA has over 7.6 million fans, about seven and a half times as many as both those pages put together. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi note of congratulations to Isro scientists reached nearly a million people in just 30 minutes and received 45,000 likes, comments and shares.
 

Mars enters Twitter

 

The Mars Orbiter Mission also entered Twitter officially today. Minutes after the successful insertion, the twitter account @MarsOrbiter was launched and acquired more than 34,450 followers, including the PMO and NASA, in a matter of hours.

 

Five of the top 10 trending hashtags on Twitter in India on Wednesday morning, incuding #Mangalyaan and #IndiaAtMars, were related to the successful mission. 

 

MOM, which completed a journey of over 650 million kilometers, wished Mars Curiosity, the rover sent by NASA to Mars, in one of her first tweets, replying to a welcome note from its American cousin.