Mangalyaan Mission
What is the purpose of Mangalyaan Mission?
- The Mangalyaan Mission (MOM), also known as the Mars Orbiter Mission, is India’s first spacecraft to travel to another planet (MOM).
- On November 5, 2013, ISRO used the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle to launch this mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island in Andhra Pradesh (PSLV).
- This was finished within 15 months after receiving formal sanction.
- The first Moon probe from India, Chandrayaan-1, provided as a template for MOM, enabling ISRO to reduce mission costs.
- The MOM spacecraft arrived to Mars on September 24, 2014. Since then, the probe has captured images of a single hemisphere of Mars.
- The spacecraft is equipped with a thermal infrared sensor, a methane sensor, a mass spectrometer, a colour camera, and ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers to examine neutral particles in the Martian exosphere as well as deuterium and hydrogen in Mars’ upper atmosphere (indicates the possibility of life).
- The six-month-long mission ended in 2019 after spending five years in orbit.
- Based on the photographs it gave, the orbiter assisted ISRO in creating a Martian Atlas.
- Two of Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos, were photographed up close by the Mars Colour Camera.
- MOM, the first man-made satellite to have ever orbited Mars, is capable of taking pictures of both Deimos and the far side of Mars in a single view frame.
- The mission’s discovery that dust storms on Mars can soar to heights of several hundred kilometres is noteworthy.
Why do we investigate Mars?
- Previous research on Mars showed that the planet originally had a high capability for supporting ecosystems and that it may currently be a microbial breeding ground.
- Despite being more than half as massive as Earth, Mars’ gravity is just 38% as strong.
- Compared to the Earth, the Sun completes its orbit more slowly.
- But it spins at roughly the same speed around its axis.
- A day on Mars only lasts 40 minutes longer than a day here on Earth, and there, a year lasts 687 Earth days.
- The red planet is smaller than Earth, yet it has a surface area that is comparable to that of the continents. The quantity of usable space on Mars may therefore be comparable as a result.
- As a result of the planet’s weak carbon dioxide atmosphere, it is currently impossible for it to support life as we know it on Earth.
- In addition, methane gas occasionally rises into the atmosphere, and soil includes substances that would be hazardous to life on Earth.
- There is water on Mars, but it is either trapped in the polar ice caps or buried beneath the planet’s surface.
- Recent studies of the Martian landscape indicate that the planet’s northern hemisphere once was covered by a massive ocean.
- Rainstorms, lakes, rivers, and cutting troughs might be present in other places.
- They were probably surrounded by a dense atmosphere that could keep liquid water at Martian pressure and temperature.
- The planet was formerly an Earth-like globe, but a number of events through time caused it to become the dusty, dry husk that we now observe.
- The purpose of the Mars project is to comprehend this transition and the seismic climate upheavals that profoundly alter worlds.
- It will also be possible to determine whether life has ever existed on Earth and whether it does so now by looking at biosignatures.
- These research might provide us the tools we need in the future to live there.
