Abstract
Recent success of 'Mangalyan' (Mars Orbitor Mission) has made all of us proud of our scientists and engineers. The study of Mars' environment will help us in understanding more about our own environment. This text gives inputs on environment of Mars which can be correlated to the concepts learned by the students in class IX Science. The students are not supposed to memorize the facts and figures mentioned in the text, rather study the facts and figures with the above objectives in mind.
Fig. 1: Mars Orbiter Mission Spacecraft getting in to Large Space Simulation Chamber for Testing
Mars Orbiter Mission (M.O.M)
Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. The conditions in Mars are believed to be hospitable since the planet is similar to earth in many ways. Mars and Earth have almost equal period of revolution around the axis. Mars takes 24 hours and 37 minutes to complete equal period of revolution around the axis. While Earth takes approximately 365 days to orbit round the Sun,
Mars takes 687 days for an orbit around the Sun. The gravity of Mars is roughly one-third to Earth’s gravity and it has a thin atmosphere with a pressure of 1% that of Earth. The atmosphere, water, ice and geology interact with each other to produce dynamic Martian environment as in Earth. Mars has surface features reminiscent of both the impact craters of the Moon, volcanoes, deserts and
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polar ice of Earth. It inspires visions of an approachable world. For ages, humans have been speculating about life on Mars. But the question that is to be still answered is whether Mars has a biosphere or ever had an environment in which life could have evolved and sustained.
Mars Orbiter Mission is ISRO’s first interplanetary mission to planet Mars with an orbiter craft designed to orbit Mars in an elliptical orbit. The mission is primarily a technological mission considering the critical mission operations and stringent