India Celebrates One Year At Mars With Downloadable Atlas

Ophir Chasma Terrain
Credit : ISRO

India is celebrating the one year anniversary of the arrival of its Mars Orbiter Mission, MOM, in orbit at the Red Planet today. To mark the event, the Indian Space Research Organization has released an extensive Mars Atlas (pdf) available for download.

From ISRO:

“The images from MCC have provided unique information about Mars at varying spatial resolutions. It has obtained Mars Global data showing clouds, dust in atmosphere and surface albedo variations, when acquired from apoapsis at around 72000 km. On the other hand high resolution images acquired from periapsis show details of various morphological features on the surface of Mars. Some of these images have been showcased in this atlas. The images have been categorized depending upon the Martian surface and atmospheric processes.

Mars is one of the closest celestial objects to the Earth and it has attracted humans towards itself since the time immemorial. A large number of unmanned orbiters, landers and rovers have been launched to reach Mars since early 1960s. These missions had provided large amount of data on various scientific aspects of the Mars. The knowledge acquired by the analysis of these data, suggested enhanced possibility of the presence of life, on this now dry and dusty planet. India has joined the club of space faring nations to explore Mars by sending its first planetary mission called, Mars Orbiter Mission or popularly known as MOM. The MOM spacecraft was designed, built and launched in record period of less than two years. MOM carried five science instruments collecting data on surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature and atmospheric escape process.”