Mars Mission excites students

Mars Mission  excites students
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Mars Mission Excites Students, India’s Space Exploration Programme, Mars Orbiter Mission. Today is literally a red letter day for India’s space exploration programme as the nation’s attempt to profile the Red Planet ie Mars would take off on Tuesday afternoon.

Today is literally a red letter day for India’s space exploration programme as the nation’s attempt to profile the Red Planet ie Mars would take off on Tuesday afternoon. The much-awaited launch of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will take place exactly at 2.38pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
Academicians and students along with scientific community are agog with the launch since it is very significant for India as its technological capabilities would be keenly watched. On the other hand, exploring Mars from all angles would be useful for the whole humanity and Indian scientists’ ability to research the planet will be tested.
“It is of great importance for India and I am confident it would be a picture-perfect launch. Scientists have been after the Mars for years now and India is new entrant” Dr K Raghunath, a space scientist of Warangal told The Hans India. Explaining further, he said- “ Mars is the second planet near the Earth after Venus. Distance is rougly 55 million kilometers. There have been striking similarities between Earth and Mars.
There is water and the surface is more or less the same. Similarly Mars rotate round the sun exactly the same number of days and hence the duration of the day is same (24 hours 39 minutes). Scientists call Mars as the land of cold desert”
According to Dr M Annadurai, Programme Director, Indian Remote-sensing Satellites (IRS) and Small Satellites Systems (SSS), the MOM was “a logical extension of Chandrayaan-1”. It would take around 300 days to reach the planet. Only in next September, some pictures sent by the MOM may be available, he added. It is equipped with a colour camera for optical imaging of Mars’ surface; a methane sensor to detect possible life on the red planet, a thermal infrared camera to study its geological activity, a Lyman Alpha Photometer to study the Martian atmosphere; and a payload to study the neutral composition of the planet’s upper atmosphere.
According to Dr Prakash, Academic Advisor in Spatial Information Technology at JNTU Hyderabad, MOM is likely to determine whether human life is possible on the Red Planet. “It would see whether human life presently exists or not and later a study may carried out to see whether humans can live there” he added. “The quality of water, methane gases, the terrain etc will be photographed. MOM would also study some other astronomical aspects such as meteoroids, movement of objects etc. It would continuously beam the pictures which can be studied at any research lab in India” he said.
Students pursuing the Spatial Information Technology at JNTUH have already been studying various aspects on Mars mission and would also prepare a project report on it. Special arrangements have been made at the Birla Science Centre and Planetarium in Hyderabad and Planetarium in Warangal to watch the launch live as well as knowing about the planet in good detail.
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