Question: In 2021; how many years, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan spacecraft, has completed orbiting around the Mars?
a) 7 Earth years.
b) 3 Earth years
c) 7 Mars years
d) None of these
Answer: (a)
Related Facts:-
- In 2021; India’s Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan spacecraft, has completed seven earth years in its orbit.
- It should be noted that Mangalyaan is ISRO’s maiden interplanetary mission, which was launched from the Sriharikota spaceport on November 5, 2013.
- ISRO officials informed that in terms of the time scale on Mars the spacecraft Mangalyaan has successfuly covered three Martian years.
- It was originally made to last just six months, but it has completed more than enough time here in the orbit of Mars.
- Scientists expect that it could cover more than a decade in the Martian orbit.
- The orbiter got inserted into Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt.
- This success made India the first Asian country to have successfully launched its Mars orbiter mission and also the first country to have entered the Martian orbit in its first attempt.
- Before India, the U.S., Russia and the EU have succeeded in sending spacecrafts to Mars which is regarded as the most complex space mission.
- The indigenously made Mangalyaan is the only artificial satellite that could image the full disc of Mars in one view frame.
- It can also image, the far side of Deimos, the outer and smaller of Mars’s two moons.
- The Mars mission helped India’s space agency prepare a Martian Atlas based on the images provided by the orbiter.
- The Mars orbiter has sent thousands of pictures of the red planet back to Earth.
- An important conclusion of the mission has been the finding that dust storms on the Martian can raise up to hundreds of kilometres.
- Built at a cost of Rs. 4.5 billion, Mangalyaan is hailed for being much cheaper than NASA’s Maven Orbiter, which was similar to India’s Mars mission.
Links:-
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-7-years-in-orbit/article36978815.ece