The primary objective of the Mars Orbiter Mission is to showcase India's rocket
launch systems, spacecraft-building and operations capabilities. The secondary
objective is to explore Mars' surface features, morphology, mineralogy and Martian
atmosphere using indigenous scientific instruments.
Credit: "Mars Orbiter Mission - India – Artist’s Concept" by Nesnad (Wikimedia Commons)
As of 22 July 2014, the spacecraft covered 80 per cent of its journey, approximately
540 million km from Earth.
Because of the recent successes of Indian space exploration missions, ISRO has
planned future space missions, including to the Moon (Chandrayaan II), the Sun
(Aditya) and Venus. The first Indian space observatory named Astrosat is also
planned to be launched around mid 2015. Astrosat will study black holes, neutron
stars and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). These black hole sources are the most
powerful energy sources in the universe and use mass accretion, the most efficient
energy producing process.