BANGALORE, India // India's spacecraft has beamed back its first photos of Mars, showing its crater-marked surface, as the country glowed with pride on Thursday after winning Asia's race to the Red Planet.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uploaded one of the photos to its Facebook page, showing an orange surface with dark holes, taken from a height of 7,300 kilometres.
ISRO also posted the photo on Twitter, with the caption: “The view is nice up here”.
The organisation’s top scientist V Koteswara Rao said the spacecraft, called the Mars Orbiter Mission, has taken a dozen photos and that everything was working well.
“The Mars colour camera on board started working soon after Orbiter stabilised in the elliptical orbit of Mars and has taken a dozen quality pictures of its surface and its surroundings,” Mr Rao said.
“The camera will also take images of the Red Planet’s two moons and beam them to our deep space network centre.”
“Health and other parameters of the spacecraft are fine and all the essential functions are performing normally.”
India became the first Asian country to reach Mars on Wednesday when the unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft entered the planet's orbit after a 10-month journey, all on a shoestring budget.
The mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the planet, is a huge source of national pride as it competes with Asian rivals for success in space.
India beat China, whose first attempt flopped in 2011 despite the Asian superpower pouring billions of dollars into its programme.
At just US$74 million (Dh271.6m), India’s mission cost less than the estimated $100m budget of the sci-fi film Gravity.
It also represents just a fraction of the cost of Nasa's $671m Maven spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.
India now joins the United States, Russia and Europe as countries that can boast of reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure.
No single nation had previously succeeded on its first go, although the European Space Agency, which represents a consortium of countries, pulled off the feat at its first attempt.
Scientists presented the Mars photos on Thursday to prime minister Narendra Modi who was on hand in the command centre in Bangalore to witness the achievement.
“The success of our space programme is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation,” Mr Modi said.
