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Another photo depicts the curving, orange-brown limb of Mars against the blackness of space.
"A shot of Martian atmosphere. I'm getting better at it. No pressure," ISRO officials tweeted about that one.
Mangalyaan, whose name means "Mars craft" in Sanskrit, arrived at the Red Planet on Tuesday night (Sept. 23), making India's space agency just the fourth entity — after the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency — to successfully place a probe in orbit around Mars.
Mangalyaan is the centerpiece of India's $74 million Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), which ISRO officials have described as primarily a technology demonstration. The spacecraft carries a camera and four scientific instruments that it will use to study the Martian surface and atmosphere during the course of a mission expected to last six to 10 months.
This photo is the first image of Mars from India's Mangalyaan orbiter after its arrival at the Red Planet. The Indian Space Research Organisation released the photo on Sept. 24, 2014.
This photo is the first image of Mars from India's Mangalyaan orbiter after its arrival at the Red Planet. The Indian Space Research Organisation released the photo on Sept. 24, 2014.
Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation
MOM reached Mars close on the heels of NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) probe, which was captured by the Red Planet's gravity on Sunday (Sept. 21). The $671 million MAVEN mission aims to help scientists determine what happened to Mars' atmosphere, which was once relatively thick but is now just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth.
MAVEN has also taken its first images of Mars from orbit; NASA released a few false-color views of the planet's atmosphere on Wednesday.
Mars orbit now hosts five operational spacecraft; NASA's Mars Odyssey probe and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as Europe's Mars Express craft, share space with MAVEN and Mangalyaan. And two rovers (NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity) are actively exploriong the planet's surface.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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MOM spacecraft had sent its first images of the planet on Thursday, a day after creating history by becoming the only such endeavour so far to have met with success on the maiden attempt.

MOM aims to study the Martian surface and mineral composition and scan its atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life.

The spacecraft is equipped with five instruments, including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas, a colour camera and a thermal-imaging spectrometer to map the surface and mineral wealth of the planet.

The Rs 450 crore MOM is the cheapest interplanetary mission. India is the first country to reach Mars in the very first attempt. European, American and Russian probes have managed to orbit or land on the planet, but after several attempts. The orbiter will keep moving in an elliptical path for at least six months with its instruments sending their gleanings back home.

The spacecraft was launched on its nine-month-long odyssey on a homegrown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, last year. It had escaped Earth's gravitational field on December 1 and was placed in the Martian orbit on September 24
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