'The view's nice up here!': India's Mars mission returns its first image of the red planet - and reveals clues to its weather
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Less than 24 hours after reaching Mars, India's Martian Orbiter Mission (Mom) has sent back its first grainy images of the red planet.
The blurry photo of Mars, pockmarked with giant craters, was taken while the craft was orbiting 4,536 miles (7,300km) above the planet's surface.
It took at least 12 minutes for the digital data to reach Earth and was presented to the country's Prime Minster before being released to the public.
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India's Mars Orbiter has sent back its first image of the red planet (shown). The image shows craters at the southwestern edge of Syrtis Major, a 'dark spot' that is thought to be a low-level shield volcano - one built almost entirely of lava flows. The direction of the streaks shows wind is moving southwest (towards top right)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent Wednesday morning witnessing the satellite's last manoeuvres into orbit from the space agency's Mars command centre in the southern city of Bangalore.
'The view is nice up here' tweeted the official account of the Mars Orbiter - which has gained more than 95,000 followers since being set up on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Modi responded through his own Twitter feed: 'Yes, I agree @MarsOrbiter, the view is indeed nice up there!'
The image shows craters at the southwestern edge of Syrtis Major.
Syrtis Major is a 'dark spot' that is thought to be a low-level shield volcano - one built almost entirely of lava flows - although it was once a plain.
The image, with a resolution of about 0.9 miles (1.5 km), was taken from a height of 4,500 miles (7,300 km) and is upside down, so south is up, and north is down.
And the image also reveals streaks being blown out of craters towards the top right, indicating wind in the image is moving in a southwest direction.
The darker area in the image is an area of lower albedo - less reflectivity - on the surface.
The Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars earlier this week, making India the first Asian nation to reach the red planet, and the first nation to reach Mars on its first attempt.
The Mars Orbiter Mission cost £45 million ($74 million), or about three-quarters the amount to make the Oscar-winning movie Gravity about astronauts stranded in space.
It arrived in orbit around the red planet after a tense 300-day marathon travelling more than 420 million miles (670 million km).
The image, with a resolution of about 0.9 miles (1.5 km), was taken from a height of 4,500 miles (7,300 km) and is upside down, so south is up and north is down. It shows the Syrtis Major region on Mars, which is highlighted in this Nasa image of Mars (inset) and an image from Google Mars (main)
Thumbs up: India's low-cost mission to Mars successfully entered the red planet's orbit earlier this week. Pictured are Indian staff from the Indian Space Research Organisation celebrating the success of the mission
The satellite will spend the next six months on an elliptical orbit - coming as close as 227 miles (365km) and swinging out to 49,700 miles (80,000km) at its farthest - as it collects scientific data on the Martian atmosphere.
India was enthralled with the mission's success.
The country's newspapers today ran front-page stories and two-page spreads detailing the mission.
Museums opened special educational exhibitions, and Indian celebrities and politicians commended the rare feat, which only the US, former Soviet Union and Esa have succeeded at before.
The US space agency Nasa's administrator Charles Bolden congratulated the Indian scientists in a statement Wednesday.
'It was an impressive engineering feet, and we welcome India to the family of nations studying another facet of the red planet,' he said.
The Mars Orbiter Mission cost £45 million ($74 million), or about three-quarters the amount to make the Oscar-winning movie Gravity about astronauts stranded in space. It arrived in orbit around the red planet after a tense 300-day marathon travelling more than 420 million miles (670 million km)
Big spenders: A comparison of how much countries have spent on their attempts to reach Mars. Both Russia and the US failed their first attempts to Mars, while the Chinese mission to Mars, dubbed Yinghuo-1 mission failed in 2011 and the Japanese 1999 mission to Mars ran out of fuel
'We look forward to Mom adding to the knowledge the international community is gathering with the other spacecraft at Mars,' the statement said.
Nasa, on Sunday, had its own success in placing its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or Maven, in orbit around the planet.
There are two other Nasa satellites and one Esa craft also now orbiting Mars, while two Nasa active rovers are on the surface.
Both Russia and the US failed their first attempts to Mars, while the Chinese mission to Mars, called Yinghuo-1, failed in 2011.
The Japanese mission to Mars, meanwhile, ran out of fuel en route in 1999.
'History has been created today,' said Prime Minister Modi at the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) when it was announced the mission had been accomplished.
Race to the red planet: The Mangalyaan spacecraft (artist's impression pictured) successfully entered orbit around Mars earlier this week, making India the first Asian nation to reach the red planet
Jubilant: Indian PM Narendra Modi is seen on a screen as he addressed scientists alongside a graphic of the Mars Orbiter, after the spacecraft successfully entered into the Mars orbit, at the Indian Space Research Organisation's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore on Wednesday
This graphic reveals the trajectory and plans for India's Mars Orbiter Mission (Mom). ISRO successfully ignited the main 440 Newton liquid engine and eight small thrusters that fired for 24 minutes and trimmed the speed of the craft to allow smooth orbit insertion under Mars' shadow
MARS-VELLOUS FACTS
On average, it lies 141.6 million miles (227.9 million km) from the sun.
With a diameter of 4,222 miles, it's around half the size of the Earth and has an average temperature of -65°C (-85°F).
The gravity there is much weaker than on Earth - slightly less than 40 per cent of ours.
The atmosphere is also desperately thin - one per cent of Earth's pressure - and 95 per cent of it is carbon dioxide.
It boasts the solar system's biggest mountain – Olympus Mons, a dead volcano.
This measures 335 miles (540 km) across and rises to a height of 88,000ft (26,800 metres), which is almost three times higher than Everest.
Mars has two natural satellites - the moons Deimos and Phobos.
The planet's red colouring comes from the iron oxide that coats its surface.
Mars has huge amounts of ice at its polar caps. If they melted, the resulting liquid would cover the whole planet in water 36ft (11 metres) deep, according to Nasa.
'We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible,' said Modi, wearing a symbolic red waistcoat at the space command centre.
Modi has said he wants to expand the country's five-decade-old space programme.
With a spacecraft around Mars, India joins a small group of nations - the United States, Russia and Europe - that have successfully sent probes to orbit or land on Mars.
ISRO successfully ignited the main 440 Newton liquid engine and eight small thrusters that fired for 24 minutes and trimmed the speed of the craft to allow smooth orbit insertion under Mars' shadow. A confirmation of orbit entry was received at around 8 a.m. India time yesterday.
After completing the journey in more than 10 months, the Mangalyaan spacecraft ('Mars craft' in Hindi) will now study the red planet's surface and scan its atmosphere for chemical methane.
It will be examining Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes.
None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form and what conditions might make life possible.
Scientists said it was helpful that Mangalyaan's data will reflect the same time period as data being collected by Nasa's newest Maven mission, allowing the two data sets to be compared for better understanding.
The US has two more satellites circling the planet at the moment, as well as two rovers rolling across the rocky Martian surface.
The official Twitter account of Nasa's Curiosity Rover - which has been on the Martian surface since 2012, tweeted: 'Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India's first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit.'
Mangalyaan's Twitter account replied: 'Howdy @MarsCuriosity ? Keep in touch. I'll be around.'
The technological triumph is fortuitously timed for Modi - he will be able to flaunt the achievement on a trip to the United States starting on Friday that includes an address to the United Nations.
Nasa's Curiosity Rover Twitter account tweeted a congratulations message to ISRO's Mars Orbiter, to which it replied 'Keep in touch. I'll be around'
'The success of our space programme is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation. Our space programme has been an example of achievement,' said the nationalist prime minister.
Modi also holds the additional charge as India's minister of space, and in June endorsed the low-cost of the project, saying it cost even less than the budget 'Gravity'. The Hollywood blockbuster cost about £61 million ($100 million) to make.
India's Mars mission has faced some criticism by critics, who have said the country could not afford to indulge in such a mission when a third of the population have no access to electricity.
However successful high-tech industries like space and science are widely regarded as good ways to drive a country's economy and create more jobs, which will help the nation in the long-term.
The country's space programme was launched in the early 1960s and India developed its own rocket technology after Western powers imposed sanctions for a nuclear weapons test in 1974.
Still, the country remains a small player in the global space industry that grew to £191 billion ($314 billion) in revenues and government budgets in 2013.
Experts say Mars mission success can help change that.
'ISRO will now hopefully attract a lot of business,' said Mayank Vahia, a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
With 30 Indian and 40 foreign satellite launches so far, its nearest cheap competition would be China, which is armed with bigger space launchers.
ISRO signed an agreement with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) last Friday to cooperate in research and development of various satellites.
Keen minds: Indian scientists and engineers of Indian Space Research Organization look at a model of the Mars Orbiter Mission at the tracking centre in Bangalore
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June endorsed the low-cost of the project, saying it cost even less than the budget 'Gravity' (pictured). The Hollywood blockbuster cost about $100 million to make
Having a blast: The rocket carrying the Indian Mars orbiter took off from the east-coast island of Sriharikota, India on 5 November 2013
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