MASS ORBITER MISSION (MOM)

The Indian government approved the Mars Orbiter Mission

(MOM) project in August 2012, a 15 months before launch.
ISRO was able to keep mission costs down by basing MOM’s
design on that of Chandrayaan-1 India’s first moon probe.
Because the PSLV did not have the power to place 1350 kg
(3000 pounds) probe on a direct trajectory the spacecraft used
low-power thrusters to raise its orbits over a period of four
weeks until it broke free of Earth’s gravity on December 1 and
headed to Mars.

It arrived at Mars on September 24, 2014 and the spacecraft

entered a highly elliptical orbit of 423 * 80000 km ( 262*50000
miles),which allows it to take picture of one entire Martian
hemisphere at a time. The spacecraft’s instruments are a
colour camera, a thermal infrared sensor, an ultraviolet
spectrometer to study deuterium and hydrogen in Mars upper
atmosphere a mass spectrometer to study neutral particles in
the Martian exosphere and a sensor Methane ( Methane’s
presense may indicate, but not necessarily, life) MOM arrived
at Mars in time to observe Comet spiding spring when it flew by
the planet at a distance 132000 km (82000 miles) on October
19,2014.