The Martian moon Phobos, as seen by the ISRO’s MOM and its Colour Camera. Courtesy ISRO.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Mars, and in particular, the Mars Orbiter Mission circling the Red Planet under the control of scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation. It’s imaging the planet and studying the atmosphere.
While everybody’s attention has been focused on Dawn and New Horizons and other missions, this spacecraft has been sending back image after image of the planet, taken with the Colour Camera. Like this one — a shot of the tiny moon Phobos silhouetted against the Martian surface. They don’t go into a lot of detail about each image, so I wonder if the blue line along the limb is the thin atmosphere?
This mission was launched as a test of flight hardware, a sort of “proof of concept” for the Indians to use as they plan further adventures in space. The images are really quite lovely, and the organization has put up a nice gallery here. It’ll keep you busy while waiting for future communications from MOM (and all the other missions at Mars); right now the planet is behind the Sun as seen from here on Earth. That makes it difficult to talk to spacecraft until July 1, 2015. To be safe, the spacecraft’s instruments have gone into hibernation, and will awaken when it’s safe to talk to Earth again.
Take some time to browse the MOM site and marvel at what the Indians have accomplished with their first planetary flight!
Artist’s conception of the Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In reality, it landed somewhere near a large cliff, and teams are still pinpointing the spot. ESA/ATG medialab
I woke up today to great news that the Rosetta mission’s Philae lander has been awake for a short time now and finally was able to phone home. The mission controllers reported that it talked with the ground team for about 85 seconds, sending data. More than 300 packets have been analyzed and the team is hoping to retrieve more than 8,000 data packets stored on the lander’s onboard memory. That information would give the science teams a good look at the most recent experiences Philae has had since waking up at some point before it phoned home.
This is really fantastic news, folks. It means that — if Philae stays awake and communicative — that we’ll have “boots on the ground” during the comet’s perihelion passage in mid-August. We’ll get reports from the comet as it warms up during closest approach to the Sun, and get some great images of the landscapes during that time, not to mention temperature and other data.
Want to follow along on Philae’s adventure? I’ll write about it as it comes and you can always go check out the Rosetta Blog for the latest updates! I’ve written more about the Rosetta mission here and here.
Good to hear from you, Philae! And, now Rosetta scientists can figure out just where you’re resting by using your signals to triangulate in on you.
