All 5 payloads of Mangalyaan operating in Mars orbit

All the five payloads of Mars Orbiter Mission — India’s maiden spacecraft to Mars — have started operating after entering the Red Planet’s orbit. India had entered an elite space club when its spacecraft entered Mars’ orbit on September 24. Interactive

All the five payloads of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) — India’s maiden spacecraft to Mars — have started operating after entering the Red Planet’s orbit.

“All the payloads have been activated and checked. We have also started getting the data. While the laboratory matching has been done, we have to yet interpret the data,” an Isro official said.

India had entered an elite space club when its spacecraft entered Mars’ orbit on September 24.

See: MoM payloads interactive

The 1,350 kilogram orbiter spacecraft carries five payloads for gathering scientific data that may shed light on Martian weather systems as well as what happened to the water that is believed to have existed once on Mars.

None of the instruments will send back enough information to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form and what conditions might make life possible.

While the scientific instruments will work for 6 months, there is a possibility of its life span exceeding beyond that.

Meanwhile Isro is gearing for the launch of IRNSS-IC on October 10 at 0156 hours .

The IRNSS is an independent regional navigational satellite system being developed by India. It is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending to 1,500 km from its boundary. The IRNSS would provide two services, with the Standard Positioning Service open for all the users and the Restricted Service, encrypted one for authorised users. IRNSS-1B was launched in April this year. Its predecessor IRNSS-1A was launched in July 2013.