India’s Mars Orbiter Converses With NASA’s Curiosity Rover On Twitter!
With the successful injection of its Mars Orbiter into the Martian orbit earlier today, India entered a select club of countries that have managed to execute a Mars mission successfully and send a spacecraft to the red planet, reports The Times Of India. With the successful injection of the spacecraft, India also becomes the first country to successfully execute a Mars mission in the very first attempt. Only the United States, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union have in the past managed to send missions to Mars — usually considered to be a very complex mission.
India’s Mar’s orbiter mission also earns the distinction of being the world’s cheapest with the entire mission costing no more than $74 million from planning to execution. To put that into perspective, 2013 Hollywood Blockbuster, Gravity, which also deals with space travel, cost more than $100 million to make! With the success of this mission to Mars, India has established new records in terms of cost effectiveness and frugality. NASA’s ongoing MAVEN mission – also to Mars — cost $671 million!
India’s Mars mission, also known as the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), entered the Martian orbit at around 7:47 am India time. The country’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore where data from the Mars Orbiter Mission is being gathered. It took the spacecraft over 300 days to enter the Martian orbit following its launch back in November 2013.
Narendra Modi applauded the efforts of the Indian scientists who were behind the mission in an address to the nation.
“MOM never disappoints. India is the first country to get this right in the first attempt,” he said.
The news of the successful injection of the Mars Orbiter into the Martian orbit was met with congratulatory notes and celebrations from across India. Users shared interesting facts about the Mars Orbiter Mission on various social networking websites.
What is red, is a planet and is the focus of my orbit? pic.twitter.com/HDRWjOcPus
— ISRO’s Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
The best part however was perhaps the truly “out of the world” conversation between NASA’s own Curiosity rover and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission – from their respective Twitter accounts, of course! NASA started off the proceedings by sending out a tweet congratulating India which read thus;
Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India’s first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit. — Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) September 24, 2014
It was followed by an apt reply from India’s Mars Orbiter Mission.
Howdy @MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch. I’ll be around.
— ISRO’s Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
Needless to say, both the tweets went viral and have been retweeted and shared by netizens thousands of times.
