Mangalyaan: Ten facts about India's first interplanetary Mars orbiter mission

ISRO's maiden interplanetary mission - the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) - has passed four years orbiting the Red Planet. Launched on November 5, 2013, the mission successfully placed itself into Martian Orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt. Taking to microblogging website twitter, the space agency tweeted, “It's been 4 years since I am around! Thank you for your love and support”. The tweet included an image taken by the orbiter of Olympus Mons - the largest known volcano of the solar system.

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Mangalyaan: Ten facts about India’s first Mars orbiter mission

1. The designed mission life of MOM was six months. The satellite has continued to beam back science data from Mars for the past four years.
2. The Mars Orbiter Mission is built with full autonomy to take care of itself for long periods without any ground intervention.
3. MOM is the only Martian satellite which could image the full disc of Mars in one view frame.
4. Mangalyaan carries a camera that has acquired over 980 images so far. The mission has also helped scientists successfully prepare a global atlas of Mars.
5. It can image the far side of the Martian moon Deimos.
6. The total cost of the mission was just about Rs 450 crore which made it the most budget-friendly Mars mission ever.
7. Five solar-powered instruments aboard Mangalyaan gather data to help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on the planet in large quantities.
8. Mangalyaan frequently goes into hibernation to conserve power, but comes back online to send images whenever it finds something interesting report.
9. The closest and farthest points of the Orbiter from Mars is 365 Kilometres and 80,000 Kilometres respectively.
10. The dry mass of the shuttle is 500 Kilos. 

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