Today morning India's maiden mission to Mars was a success.
And I went berserk. A moment of feeling so proud of what our nation has achieved. A moment of vastness encapsulated in a moment of time. I can only imagine how awesome the Scientists at ISRO must have been feeling!
I got up at 6:30am in the hotel room. I did not even need an alarm to wake me up - just got up as if I subconsciously knew that it was Time. I am travelling now and unfortunately Hyatt does not have DD channel. However, ISRO is just one step ahead of everyone at this time and they had a livestream on their site ! Immediately switched to that and turned on the TV news channels ( which were using that same stream).
The whole event lasted for almost 2 hours. 2 hours glued to the laptop, tv, facebook and twitter. And at the end - the best clapping sounds I have ever heard.
MOM is in orbit !
There are some very interesting facts about this momentous event.
Thats the ISRO Mars Orbiter talking to NASA's Curiosity rover :)
As the amazing feeling is still sinking in, I would also like you to go over to my friend's blog and read his views also ( ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission is a success )
Once again - Dear ISRO. /Respect
And I went berserk. A moment of feeling so proud of what our nation has achieved. A moment of vastness encapsulated in a moment of time. I can only imagine how awesome the Scientists at ISRO must have been feeling!
I got up at 6:30am in the hotel room. I did not even need an alarm to wake me up - just got up as if I subconsciously knew that it was Time. I am travelling now and unfortunately Hyatt does not have DD channel. However, ISRO is just one step ahead of everyone at this time and they had a livestream on their site ! Immediately switched to that and turned on the TV news channels ( which were using that same stream).
The whole event lasted for almost 2 hours. 2 hours glued to the laptop, tv, facebook and twitter. And at the end - the best clapping sounds I have ever heard.
MOM is in orbit !
There are some very interesting facts about this momentous event.
- India is the 3rd nation in the world to have a successful mission to Mars
- It is the first nation to have done it on the 1st attempt.
- It is the first Asian nation to have reached Mars.
- It is the least costly mission to the red planet. NASA's just reached MAVEN is about 10 times more costly.
- It takes 12 1/2 minutes for the message to reach Earth from the orbiter. In comparison it takes about 8 mins for the light from the sun to reach earth.
- Most of the maneuvers for getting in orbit were done automatically during the time that the orbiter was behind Mars - so no message from Earth would be reaching it when it was in the most critical part of the journey.
Just take a step back and think about it. A probe launched in Nov of last year is now orbiting Mars.
Man. That's a huge deal.
Science has again trumped Superstitions.
Post the confirmation that the process was executed flawlessly, there was some more awesomeness. The guys at ISRO are really into the social networks now. So, immediately after , we got our first tweet from the official MOM account :
What is red, is a planet and is the focus of my orbit? pic.twitter.com/HDRWjOcPus
— ISRO's Mars Orbiter (@MarsOrbiter) September 24, 2014
And then some more awesomeness followed.Thats the ISRO Mars Orbiter talking to NASA's Curiosity rover :)
As the amazing feeling is still sinking in, I would also like you to go over to my friend's blog and read his views also ( ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission is a success )
Once again - Dear ISRO. /Respect
