Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also known as Mangalyaan mission completes seven years of orbiting the red planet today. ISRO's Mangalyaan spacecraft is orbiting Mars since September 24, 2014. MOM is India's first interplanetary mission to cross the Earth's orbit successfully.
Mangalyaan is often hailed as India's most successful space mission and also for its cost-effectiveness. The mission was budgeted at Rs 450 crores or USD 74 million which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter to Mars, launched around the same time, had cost about seven times as much.
India's first interplanetary endeavour, helped India's space agency prepare a Martian Atlas based on the images provided by the orbiter. The Mars Colour Camera took close distance images of Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars. MOM is the only Martian artificial satellite that could capture the full disc of Mars in one view frame and also takes images of the far side of Deimos, the space agency had said.
An important conclusion of the mission has been the finding that dust storms on the Martian can rise up to hundreds of kilometres.
The Mangalyaan spacecraft carried along at least 100 kg of fuel for contingency and orbit corrections and the fuel is still left in abundance. One of the key reasons for the long survival was ISRO's ability to do manoeuvres without wasting fuel.
So far, the spacecraft had survived the passing of comet Siding Spring, avoided a long eclipse that could have potentially exhausted its batteries and survived the communication blackout for a period of one month from June 2, 2015, to July 2, 2015, due to the solar conjunction.
