Olympus Mons, collinear mons - Arsia, Pavonis & Ascraeus and Valles Marineris canyon system!
The comet will be closest to Mars at 11.40 p.m. on Sunday and the encounter will last 21 minutes.ISRO’s payload teams plan to operate four of the five instruments during this period, including the Mars Colour Camera and the Methane Sensor for Mars and the Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer.They will keep vigil from 10 p.m. on Sunday until 4 a.m. on Monday.Mr. Arunan said MOM would cover the comet before and after the encounter. It would take pictures of the comet and take a peek at the composition of the gases in its tail, which include hydrogen and methane coming from the origin of the Solar System.ISRO expects the earliest pictures to be processed by Monday afternoon while the science data will take longer to interpret.
Phew! Experience of a lifetime. Watched the #MarsComet #SidingSpring whizzing past the planet. I'm in my orbit, safe and sound.
ISRO officials involved in the Mars Orbiter Mission(MOM) said the images and data that MOM sent were being processed as on Monday evening. The first pictures could be made public in a couple of days while data on the comet may take longer to interpret.
Kiran Kumar, director of Isro's Ahmedabad-based Space Application Centre, told TOI MOM's five payloads were active when the comet made the 90-minute flyby. But, after the closest approach to Mars, they were deactivated for three hours. "We did a post-event check of the spacecraft and noted that it is healthy and normal despite it being closest to the comet," he said. Kumar said the MOM team is eagerly awaiting the data about the comet, which the spacecraft has gathered. It is expected to be downloaded from Monday night onwards. The Mars Colour Camera has taken a photo of the comet and the Methane Sensor For Mars sniffed for methane.
Kumar said MOM will now be operating in a 400 km x 72,000 km orbit, which he added was good.
India’s Mars Orbiter Mangalyaan is expected to send clearer pictures in two months’ time, said a senior official of the Indian space agency Friday, as currently the pixtures are hazy and obliterated.A.S. Kiran Kumar, director, Space Application Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS over phone from Ahmedabad: “The Mars Orbiter is fine. There are no issues. Each time the spacecraft completes one orbit, the data is being studied. The data from the scientific instruments on the Orbiter is being collected and studied. It will take some time to come out with the conclusion.”He said the sun’s position is moving, hence the Orbiter is expected to send clearer pictures of the planet’s surface in two months’ time.It is only next year that the Orbiter is expected to face some challenges, he said.Kumar said: “The sun’s position will then be closer to Mars. As a result, the Orbiter’s antenna may not be working and there will be a blackout situation for 10-12 days around May next year.”India launched its Mars Orbiter Nov 5, 2013 and it inserted the spacecraft into the red planet’s orbit Sep 24.Later, ISRO repositioned the Mars Orbiter as a precautionary measure against the Comet Siding Spring that flew by the red planet Oct 20.According to Kumar, around 1.9 kg of the fuel was spent on repositioning the spacecraft.He said: “The fuel position of Mars Orbiter is comfortable. It has more than 40 kg fuel on board.”
Kurian Mathew, principal investigator of the Methane Sensor For Mars, said: "We are analyzing data from both from Mars and comet Siding Spring. We will highlight them at an appropriate moment."
The quality of the pictures taken by the Mars Colour Camera in the last one-and-half month has attracted considerable praise from across the world. However, for some unexplained reason the first anniversary of MOM's launch on Wednesday remained a quite affair with no mention of it in Isro's Facebook and Twitter accounts.
It's amazing what a faint object that is, given how close it was to Mars!
The data being collected from the Mars Orbiter will soon be used by ISRO and NASA to enhance knowledge about the red planet. “We have to see how to proceed and what should be done with the data,” he said. NASA is expected to discuss the issue with ISRO in two months time.
As the world rings in the New Year on January 1 Indian space scientists will have another reason to uncork the champagne: The day will mark 100 days of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in the red planet's orbit.
I was just informed that the data application and payload people are going to release a bunch of processed data products on 1st January. They hinted that MENCA apparently has a lot of cool new information. Fingers crossed for some good papers coming out of this !Also, some tidbits :We are currently receiving data at around 20 Kbps, down from a max of 40 Kbps, and it'll keep going down as Mars moves further away.Apparently, we are at the moment in occultation (hidden behind the planet)We are still yet to have a "Lost in Space" event for MOM : which is record that nobody (not even JPL) has had till date.The autonomy system designed for MOM is helping the Chandrayaan-2 rover immensely, shortening quite a bit of design cycle