Today India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft arrived at Mars and was successfully placed into orbit. Launched 5th November, 13 days before NASA’s Maven the spacecraft, it took a slightly different route to Mars resulting in it arriving three days after MAVEN. This is the first spacecraft from India to travel this far from Earth and it performed it’s orbit insertion as planned and is now in orbit of Mars.
India are only the fourth entity to place an craft into orbit of Mars following NASA, ESA and Soviet Union. To add to the achieve they are the only one two achieve orbit on the very first attempt.
The MOM spacecraft is carrying the following instruments: –
- Lyman Alpha Photometer – LAP
- Martian Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer – MENCA
- Mars Color Camera – MCC
- Methane Sensor for Mars – MSM
- Thermal Infrared Imaging System – TIS
For more information on MOM check out its mission page here.
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