Mars data interesting, more work needed on it: ISRO

Chennai: The Mars Orbiter Mission has produced interesting data but further work is needed over such inputs for validation purposes, a top ISRO official has said.

"We have got interesting data from the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), but it needs lot more analysis, it needs to be validated by research," ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said.

"Only data can tell us that," he told PTI when asked if something really exciting could be expected out of data from MOM. "The data requires significant amount of additional work to be done to convert them into research output."

"For example, whatever (data) recently came from NASA...In 2011 they wrote their first paper but only now they have validated," he added.

ISRO has extended till October 10 its "Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for India's research community for using data from MOM.

The AO is for using data from five payloads of MOM, Mars Colour Camera (MCC), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP) and Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer (MENCA).

"We have made the entire data accessible to research community through the AO, we will also be looking forward to research community carrying out their independent research for all five instruments," he said.

On the prospect of finding presence of water in Mars, he said "with respect to water...Our set of instruments do not have much scope...Except the mars spectrometer which is there."

"We are flying at an altitude of of minimum about 300 kilometres which is still far, in the end of operation we will take satellite to the surface of Mars or very close to it at that time we may get something different but otherwise the kind of instruments which we are carrying are still like baby steps in exploration compared to what Americans have done."

Celebrating one year of MOM's presence in orbit, ISRO released a Mars Atlas recently.

MOM was launched on November 5, 2013 from Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), about 100 km from here.