September 27, 2014

Image of the Mars atmosphere taken by MAVEN's IUVS instrument (Image Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado; NASA)

During the last week, two spacecraft successfully entered the planet Mars orbit, the American MAVEN and the Indian MOM, informally known as Mangalyaan. Both NASA and ISRO, the Indian Space Agency which is now starting being well known in the world, immediately started test operations of their probes, which sent the first images of the red planet.