While ISRO's recent space mission?Chandrayaan 2?made all of us proud?despite the challenges it faced, its Mangalyaan Mission was also one of its biggest achievements.
And while the probe was expected to only last six months, five years on and it still shows no sign of quitting yet.?
ISRO/NASA
The mission completed five years yesterday (Tuesday, 25th September). In the five years, Mangalyaan has been active, it has allowed scientists at ISRO to develop a Martian Atlas with the images the orbiter has been sending to Earth. As per ISRO, the orbiter has sent over 2TB (terabytes) of data.?
These also include pictures of two Moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos captured by the Mars Colour Camera (MCC) on the orbiter.?
Mangalyaan was the only Martian artificial satellite that captured a full disc of Mars in one view frame, along with pictures of the far side of Deimos.
Along with the images, Mangalyaan had also discovered dust storms on Mars that rose up to hundreds of kilometres. Data from this mission has also helped in creating 23 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Former ISRO chairman AS Kiran Kumar said in a statement to PTI, "This was the first time we were going beyond the earth's gravitational field. During that period, you could encounter non-normal situation which could have called for correction and ensuring that certain repeat operations would be required.
Reuters
"We were able to perform all the steps without any hiccups and we succeeded in reaching Mars orbit without extra fuel consumption. The insertion also went off very well, which helped save fuel." It has fuel to last one whole year, before it finally goes off.?
Mangalyaan was also lauded for costing just Rs 450 crores which was considerably less than Academy Award Winning Hollywood movie Gravity and loads cheaper than Nasa's Maven orbiter.