By Priyanka Mehta
October 08, 2022
Mangalyaan recognises India as the first Asian country to reach Mars' orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency.
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Mangalyaan arrived in orbit after a 300-day marathon covering over 670 million kilometres.
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India's Mars orbiter craft passed about eight years in its orbit, well beyond its designed mission life of six months.
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Mangalyaan was developed to demonstrate technology, achieve designing, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission.
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Mangalyaan collected data on the Martian landscape including surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature, and atmospheric escape processes.
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Technological demonstration of space instruments came to reality with Mangalyaan. Instruments included Mars Colour Camera (MCC), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS), and Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), among others.
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Using space instruments, Mangalyaan studied the dynamic events and weather of Mars. We could measure thermal emissions all the time and map the surface and mineral composition of Mars, levels of Methane (CH4), map neutral composition in the exosphere and more.
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Eight years later, the mission is now over. ISRO declared the end of the most successful mission on October 2, 2022, declaring Mangalyaan as non-recoverable due to lack of fuel.
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Looking at the success Mangalyaan achieved, India is planning to launch a mission to study the Sun and planet Venus. We are making headway to launch Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon alongside other astronaut missions.
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