M A I N   N E W S

Mars orbiter beams back first pictures
Four of the five payloads aboard the spacecraft to be activated this week
Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service

The first picture taken by the Mars orbiter shows the surface of the Red Planet from a height of 7300m . PTI

Bangalore, September 25
The colour camera aboard India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has sent its first pictures and by the end of this week, four of the five payloads aboard the orbiter will get activated.

V Kesava Raju, mission director of MOM, told The Tribune that the Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA) and the Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIIS) would be activated on Sunday. Mars Colour Camera (MCC) was switched off after its operations yesterday. The camera, too, would be switched on again on September 28, Raju said.

The MSM will give inputs on the existence of life on the Red Planet, while MENCA and TIIS are meant for particle environment study and surface imaging study, respectively.

The Mars mission team is yet to decide when the only remaining payload, the Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), will be turned on. LAP is supposed to throw light on how water disappeared from Mars. Launched from the spaceport at Sriharikota near Chennai on November 5 last year, the Indian satellite was inserted in the Martian orbit yesterday morning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally present at ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network Centre) from where the insertion operation was monitored. One of the photographs sent by the camera aboard the spacecraft was posted on the MOM’s Facebook page. It showed a red surface with bubble-like images which could be craters dotting the Martian land. Taken from 7,300 km above the Red Planet, the photograph lacks clarity.

Nevertheless, photographs sent by the Indian orbiter are being found exciting by those who have seen them. “These are not pictures perfect. But they are nice,” a 13-year-old Bangalore-based space enthusiast said.

Raju said the area of Mars that had been photographed did not have a name. “We have latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the area,” he said.

First Pakistani in space congratulates India

A Pakistani woman explorer on Thursday congratulated India for its triumph in maiden Mars mission, calling it a giant leap for South Asia.

Namira Salim, the only Pakistani member of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial space liner planned for 2015, said India’s great success has made the entire region proud.“The MOM success is a giant leap for South Asia. The ISRO and all its scientists have achieved a great astronomical feat,” she said.