It’s been just a few hours since India’s first interplanetary mission, the Mars orbiter, entered the red planet’s orbit successfully and it is already hard at work.
The Mangalyaan has sent back five photographs of Mars. The Indian Space Research Organisation confirmed that their ground station had receieved the first set of data from the craft.
The Mangalyaan had successfully entered the Mars's orbit early on Wednesday morning, making India the first country in the world to send a spacecraft to Mars in its maiden attempt.
The country joined the United States, European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in the elite club of Martian explorers with the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately called MOM.
“History has been created by our scientists,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech immediately after the scientists declared the mission a success. “We have dared to reach out to the unknown.”
MOM's scientific goals including using five solar-powered instruments to gather data that will help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on Mars in large quantities. It will also search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes.
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