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.
A few hours after its arrival, the MAVEN probe’s Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument obtained false-color images. The composition created shows Mars from an altitude of 36,500 km (almost 22,700 miles) in three different ultraviolet wavelengths bands.
In blue you can see the ultraviolet light from the Sun spread by atomic hydrogen gas in an extended cloud that reaches thousands of kilometers above Mars surface. In green you can see a different ultraviolet wavelength that is mostly sunlight reflected by atomic oxygen, showing a smaller cloud composed of oxygen. In red you can see the ultraviolet light reflected from the surface of the planet: the brightest part on the bottom right is light reflected from the polar ice or clouds.
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The oxygen in the gaseous state is held near the surface by Mars gravity while the hydrogen, which is lighter, is present at higher altitudes and also extends beyond the limits of the image. The two gases are produced from water and carbon dioxide that are broken in these two elements.
About a day after it arrived in Mars orbit, MOM sent a picture taken with its Mars Colour Camera (MCC) instrument, a camera that takes pictures in the visual spectrum. It was taken from an altitude of about 7,300 km (about 4,300 miles) with a spatial resolution of 376 meters.
Subsequently, MOM has already taken more, better, pictures but its MCC isn’t meant to win photo contests but to provide a context for the other instruments of the probe. At ISRO mission control center it’s essential to have these images to understand the real size and other characteristics of what they will see through other instruments.
This is just the beginning of the MAVEN and MOM missions so both spacecraft will send more pictures that will be spectacular and at the same time interesting from the scientific point of view. Also for the activities of other space probes and the rovers, the next months on Mars will be really intense!
