India’s Mars Orbiter Takes Impressive Full Globe Image

In the first week since it was inserted into Mars orbit, the newest addition to the small Martian fleet of spacecraft has managed to send home a rather impressive full globe image of the red planet. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted this image on the programs Facebook page. In the image you can see regional dust storms over northern hemisphere. The image was captured by spacecraft’s Mars Color Camera instrument. Launched last year this was the first attempt by India to send a mission to Mars and has been highly successful. While some have said the funds used to build and launch this mission (75 million dollars) should have been spent on domestic issues when they see images like this it cannot help but boost the pride in the nation.

Related: How did India launch a Mars Mission at such a low cost?

In addition this achievement shows they have the technically capability to complete a mission that formerly only a few other nations were capable of. This should go a long way to having business around the world turn to India, sending them new engineering and technical work. I would hazard a guess that the cost of this mission will be returned to the people of India many times over from the new business that will come their way from other countries.

While the new orbiter is far less expensive than U.S, Missions for example. it also is much simpler. This spacecraft is more of a technical demonstration or pathfinder mission for India. Even with that said it is still an impressive achievement, especially when you consider they succeeded on the first attempt.