Mangalyaan’s Earth... 'without boundaries'

Chennai, November 22: The Mars orbiter ‘Mangalyaan’ which is currently revolving around Earth has sent its first pictures. ISRO has shared this first cute snap of the Earth taken by Mars Color Camera (MCC) of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft taken on 19 November at 13:50 hrs (IST) from 67975 km altitude with a resolution of 3.53 km.

The Earth has seen massacres and mass killings of humans by humans to justify one’s superiority upon other. The Mother Earth has witnessed big wars to testify territories drawn by the human race to prove one’s superiority on other. But as we go up and up, as we ‘arise’, as they say in Hindu spiritual teachings, the sense of ego widens and the feeling of existence becomes more extensive. The eyecatchy image of Earth sent by Mangalyaan which shows the region of the Indian subcontinent and parts of Africa without the manmade boundries visible from the space, expresses such a feeling.

While testing the instruments on MOM, the ISRO team handling it turned MOM colour camera towards Earth and switched it on for the first time since MOM was launched on November 5.

While sharing the picture, the update on ISRO's Facebook page say, “We have a nice little thing to share with all of you... yesterday in the process of testing our payloads we turned the Mars Color Camera towards the Earth and switched it on... and here is the "First ever image of Earth Taken by Mars Color Camera. This image was taken yesterday at around 1350 hrs from a height of almost 70,000 km above earth and has a spatial resolution of 3.5 km... We are certain we're going to get some great shots in the orbit of Mars ...”

Media reports quote ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan saying that the spacecraft was now orbiting Earth once in 91.5 hours. The last orbit-raising operation of November 16 has placed the orbit apogee or farthest point from Earth at 2 lakh km. It will continue in this orbit until it is given the escape velocity to leave Earth on December 1 and set on the path to Mars.

ISRO’s spokesman Deviprasad Karnik noted that the regular IRS remote sensing satellites take pictures of Earth all the time but from distances of 600-800 km from ground. This picture was taken from several times that distance.

Mangalyaan has captured cyclonic storm “Helen” which is heading towards Andhra Pradesh coast.

Earlier, Isro had performed all five orbit raising manoeuvres planned on the Mars orbiter and raised the apogee of the spacecraft to over 192,000km. After the successful completion of these operations, the Mars Orbiter Mission is expected to take on the "crucial event" of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42am on December 1.

It will reach the red planet's orbit by September 24, 2014 after an over 10 month voyage. Isro's PSLV C 25 successfully injected the 1,350kg "Mangalyaan" orbiter (Mars craft) into the orbit around the earth some 44 minutes after a text book launch at 2.38pm from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on November 5, marking the successful completion of the first stage of the Rs 450 crore mission.