Twitter Flooded With Messages On Mangalyaan's Success; First Images Of Mars Captured By The Spacecraft
NASA's Curiosity Rover welcomed Mangalyaan Mars probe, India's spacecraft, into the Red Planet with a friendly tweet. On India's success, on its very first attempt, NASA congratulated India on its interplanetary mission.
NASA congratulated ISRO on its successful mission. It wrote on Twitter:
We congratulate @ISRO for its Mars arrival! @MarsOrbiter joins the missions studying the Red Planet. #JourneyToMars pic.twitter.com/lz90flOZLG
— NASA (@NASA) September 24, 2014
NASA's Curiosity Rover, which has been on the surface of Mars since 2012, also congratulated them. Its post went like this:
Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India's first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit.
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) September 24, 2014
Mangalyaan, meaning "Mars' craft" in Hindi, reached the orbit of Mars on Sept 24. ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation, is the brain behind it. @MarsOrbiter had more than 32,000 followers after creating its Twitter page. It replied to Curiosity Rover's tweet with the following message:
Howdy @MarsCuriosity ? Keep in touch. I'll be around. — ISRO's Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
Read more about the Mangalyaan spacecraft in the BBC News Web site
India is the fourth nation to have a Mars probe after the U.S., Europe and Russia. India is also the first Asian country to achieve such a feat. But among all the countries, India is the only one to reach the Red Planet on its first try.
On Sept 24, in India, #Mangalyaan, #IndiaAtMars,#marsorbitormission and #Martian were among the top 10 Twitter trends. Many celebrities congratulated India on its successful mission. The celebrities from India are Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, Indian cricketer, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, Amitabh Bachchan, a Bollywood actor, Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician and many more. Here is a look at the messages they tweeted:
The country is united in applauding efforts of the team @isro, I salute the silent achievers that has worked to make this happen #Mangalyaan — sachin tendulkar (@sachin_rt) September 24, 2014
History is created & am glad to have witnessed it. Will never forget this day! Congrats to our scientists http://t.co/RNbacKjB5q #Mangalyaan — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 24, 2014
T 1623 - #Mangalyaan..Bharat Mata ki Jai !! Historic ! Only country to have succeeded in first attempt, on budget less than Hollywood film ! — Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) September 24, 2014
Proud day for India. Congratulations @isro on making us the first to successfully get a spacecraft into the Mars orbit on our maiden attempt — Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) September 24, 2014
Still thrilled about #Mangalyaan! Did u know there's a feature called "Mangala Valles" on Mars, named in Hindi&Spanish? @MarsOrbiter @isro — Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 24, 2014
The Mangalyaan spacecraft arrived in the orbit a day after NASA's MAVEN reached. MAVEN has sent back the first few pictures and with this, the initial data from the planet has been revealed. Though MAVEN has no camera, it captured images with the help of the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectograph. The data are the first UV images that have been captured of Mars.
The spacecraft has begun its work by clicking a lot of pictures, reported BBC News. The images were being processed and then later, it would be released. The spacecraft will also be studying the atmosphere of Mars.
The images include pictures of the craters on the surface of the Red Planet. Officials said that the pictures were of good quality and will be shown to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, before being made available to the public.