Dear Readers

A fellow blogger has written a very good post on India’s Mars Mission and commented on my previous post. Here I am giving a brief introduction of the post and a link to the post.Please read in the continuation of my previous post.

India has done something no other space-faring nation could achieve. India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, known as MOM entered orbit around Mars on September 23rd . The milestone achieved – successful on the first try. Russia, the United States, the European Space Agency and Japan could not do the same.

Interestingly,MOM joins MAVEN, the NASA orbiter that arrived just two days prior. The contrasts between these two missions is striking.

MOM cost between $74 and 78 million, about one-ninth the cost of MAVEN. MOM’s work is in many ways  more interesting if you are talking about signs of microbial life on Mars. MOM will study methane in the Martian atmosphere. Whiffs of methane have been detected by other Martian orbiters. So is methane on Mars a geological or biological phenomenon? MOM may help answer the important question. The rest of the instruments on MOM are designed to study Martian weather and map the mineral composition of the planet’s surface.

MAVEN doesn’t have is a camera. MOM does have a camera and will take colour pictures of the planet surface. India released the first image taken yesterday.

read the post here