Mars, named after the Roman god of war, is the fourth planet from theSun in our solar system. After moon, Mars is second most fascinating and soughtafter astronomical object for the humans on as it can also be seen from the Earthwith naked eyes. The conditions in Mars are believed to be hospitable since theplanet is similar to earth in many ways. Mars can prove to be a very good laboratoryto study a typical planet environment where one can study Mars’ surface,gravitational and magnetic fields. Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is India?€?s firstinterplanetary mission to planet Mars with an orbiter craft designed to orbit marsin an elliptical orbit of 376 km to 80,000 km. It is ISRO?€?s second space launchafter the success of Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008. The MOM spacecraft weigh 1337 kgand has been configured to carry out observations with five scientific instrumentsnamely Mars Color Camera (MCC), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Thermal infra-redImaging Spec! trometer (TIS), Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP) and Mars Exospheric NeutralComposition Analyzer (MENCA) onboard to explore various facets of planet Mars. Allthese five payloads are designed and developed indigenously ?€? MCC, MSM and TIS bySpace Application Centre (SAC) Ahmedabad, LAP by Laboratory for Electro-OpticalSystems (LEOS) Bangalore and MENCA by Space Physics Laboratory (SPL) at VikramSarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). MOM was launched with PSLV-XL (C-25), a variant ofISRO?€?s most reliable workhorse PSLV on November 5, 2013 afternoon. One of themain objectives of MOM is to develop the space transportation technologies requiredfor design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission. Thescientific objective is the exploration of Mars surface features, morphology,topography, mineralogy and Martian atmosphere by indigenous scientific instruments.
