Mangalyaan sends first photo of Mars, says view is nice

Zee Media Bureau/Salome Phelamei

Chennai: After scripting history in space on Wednesday, India's Mangalyaan has sent five beautiful and high quality pictures of Mars captured by its cameras onboard the satellite.

The beautiful and colourful photograph of Mars has been posted by ISRO on its official Twitter account.

Here is the first image of the Red Planet clicked and sent by the India's Mars spacecraft.

1st image of Mars, from a height of 7300 km; with 376m spatial resolution. MT @MarsOrbiter The view is nice up here. pic.twitter.com/RbqmnSyyFp

— ISRO (@isro) September 25, 2014

The Rs 450-crore project of India's Mars mission, which is the world's cheapest space mission, was successfully put into the Martian orbit in its very first try.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft kept its rendezvous with the Red Planet after the hibernating main 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) and eight thrusters on board were ignited for 24-minutes from 7.17am that slowed its benumbing speed to be smoothly captured into the Martian orbit.

As the 1,350kg spacecraft was manoeuvred into its designated place, scientists broke into wild cheers and congratulated each other.

The estimated time of the Mars spacecraft in the orbit is between 6-10 months. The main aim is to hunt for elusive methane and find out if life ever existed on the planet Mars since it is more earth-like.