Google Doodle honours MOM

Even as India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) finished its first month rotating the Red Planet, the search engine giant Google commemorated it with a special doodle of Mangalyaan against the backdrop of Mars.

While MOM has been India’s biggest space achievement, it entered the Mars orbit on September 24 after it took off for space on November 5, 2013. Hence, India’s space agency, ISRO, is part of the elite club of Martian explorers with the United States, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union, even before the Asian giants, China and Japan.

Earlier on Monday, MOM tweeted that comet Siding Spring went by the Red Planet. While ISRO officials said that MOM may send pictures of the comet and that the data and images were being processed, the information could be brought out shortly.

“Phew! Experience of a lifetime. Watched the #MarsComet #SidingSpring whizzing past the planet. I’m in my orbit, safe and sound,” tweeted MOM, with more than 1,68,000 followers.

Image Credit: Nesnad / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_Orbiter_Mission_-_India_-_ArtistsConcept.jpg