Anniversary of the Mars Pathfinder Landing

NASA - Mars Pathfinder Mission patch.

July 3, 2013

Mars Pathfinder was launched on Dec. 4, 1996 at 1:58:07 am EST on a Delta II rocket. After an uneventful journey, the spacecraft safely landed on the surface of Mars on July 4, 1997. The first set of data was received shortly after 5:00 p.m. followed by the release of images at 9:30 p.m. The Sojourner rover, with three Lewis components, then began its Martian trek and returned images and other data over the course of three months. After operating on the surface of Mars three times longer than expected and returning a tremendous amount of new information about the red planet, NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission completed the last successful data transmission cycle from Pathfinder at 6:23 a.m. EDT on Sept. 27, 1997.

A panoramic view of Pathfinder's Ares Vallis landing site reveals traces of a warmer, wetter past, showing a floodplain covered with a variety of rock types, boulders, rounded and semi-rounded cobbles and pebbles. These rocks and pebbles are thought to have been swept down and deposited by floods which occurred early in Mars' evolution in the Ares and Tiu regions near the Pathfinder landing site.

The image, which is a 75-frame, color-enhanced mosaic taken by the Imager for Mars Pathfinder, looks to the southwest toward the Rock Garden, a cluster of large, angular rocks tilted in a downstream direction from the floods. The Pathfinder rover, Sojourner, is shown snuggled against a rock nicknamed Moe. The south peak of two hills, known as Twin Peaks, can be seen on the horizon, about 1 kilometer (6/10ths of a mile) from the lander. The rocky surface is comprised of materials washed down from the highlands and deposited in this ancient outflow channel by a catastrophic flood.

Image above: Artist's view of the Mars Pathfinder arrived at the red planet on July 4, 1997.Image credit: NASA / JPL.

The remarkably successful Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, part of NASA's Discovery program of fast track, low-cost missions with highly focused science objectives, was the first spacecraft to explore Mars in more than 20 years. In all, during its three months of operations, the mission returned about 2.6 gigabits of data, which included more than 16,000 images of the Martian landscape from the lander camera, 550 images from the rover and about 8.5 million temperature, pressure and wind measurements.

For more information about Mars Pathfinder Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars-pathfinder/ and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/

Images, Text, Credits: NASA / JPL.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Long-Running NASA / CNES Ocean Satellite Takes Final Bow

NASA / CNES - Jason-1 Ocean satellite patch.

July 3, 2013

Image above: Artist's concept of the joint NASA/CNES Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite. During its 11-1/2-year life, Jason-1 helped create a 20-plus-year climate record of global ocean surface topography, providing new insights into ocean circulation, tracking our rising seas and enabling more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The curtain has come down on a superstar of the satellite oceanography world that played the "Great Blue Way" of the world's ocean for 11-1/2 years. The successful joint NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.

Launched Dec. 7, 2001, and designed to last three to five years, Jason-1 helped create a revolutionary 20-plus-year climate data record of global ocean surface topography that began in 1992 with the launch of the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon satellite. For more than 53,500 orbits of our planet, Jason-1 precisely mapped sea level, wind speed and wave height for more than 95 percent of Earth's ice-free ocean every 10 days. The mission provided new insights into ocean circulation, tracked our rising seas and enabled more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts. 

"Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical and international success," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission met all of its requirements, performed an extended mission and demonstrated how a long-term climate data record should be established from successively launched satellites. Since launch, it has charted nearly 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) of rise in global sea levels, a critical measure of climate change and a direct result of global warming. The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe."

Graphic above: Jason-1 contributed to this 20-year data record of the global mean sea level change, providing the first direct measurement of this important indicator of global climate change.
Image Credit: University of Colorado.

During parts of its mission, Jason-1 flew in carefully coordinated orbits with both its predecessor Topex/Poseidon and its successor, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, launched in 2008. These coordinated orbit periods, which lasted about three years each, cross-calibrated the satellites, making possible a 20-plus-year unbroken climate record of sea level change. These coordination periods also doubled data coverage.

Combined with data from the European Space Agency's Envisat mission, which also measured sea level from space, these data allow scientists to study smaller-scale ocean circulation phenomena, such as coastal tides, ocean eddies, currents and fronts. These small-scale features are thought to be responsible for transporting and mixing heat and other properties, such as nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide, within the ocean.

"Jason-1 was an exemplary and multi-faceted altimeter mission and contributed so much to so many scientific disciplines," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES president in Paris. "Not only did Jason-1 extend the precise climate record established by Topex/Poseidon, it made invaluable observations for mesoscale ocean studies on its second, interleaved orbit. Even from its 'graveyard' orbit, Jason-1 continued to make unprecedented new observations of the Earth's gravity field, with precise measurements right till the end."

The in-orbit Jason-2 mission, operated by the meteorological agencies of the United States and Europe (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and EUMETSAT, respectively) in collaboration with NASA and CNES, is in good health and continues to collect science and operational data. This same U.S./European team is preparing to launch the next satellite in the series, Jason-3, in March 2015. 

Image above: Regional changes in sea level based on the 19-year trend from 1993 through 2012, as measured using radar altimeter data from several satellites, including the NASA/CNES Jason-1 mission. Reds and purples represent the largest increases in sea level, with blues representing the largest decreases. These changes reflect the impact of decadal-scale climate variability on the regional distribution of sea level rise. Image Credit: University of Colorado.

Contact was lost with the Jason-1 satellite on June 21 when it was out of visibility of ground stations. At the time of the last contact, Jason-1 and its instruments were healthy, with no indications of any alarms or anomalies. Subsequent attempts to re-establish spacecraft communications from U.S. and French ground stations were unsuccessful. Extensive engineering operations undertaken to recover downlink communications also were unsuccessful.

After consultation with the spacecraft and transmitter manufacturers, it was determined a non-recoverable failure with the last remaining transmitter on Jason-1 was the cause of the loss of contact. The spacecraft's other transmitter experienced a permanent failure in September 2005. There now is no remaining capability to retrieve data from the Jason-1 spacecraft. 

On July 1, mission controllers commanded Jason-1 into a safe hold state that reinitialized the satellite. After making several more unsuccessful attempts to locate a signal, mission managers at CNES and NASA decided to proceed with decommissioning Jason-1.  The satellite was then commanded to turn off its magnetometer and reaction wheels. Without these attitude control systems, Jason-1 and its solar panels will slowly drift away from pointing at the sun and its batteries will discharge, leaving it totally inert within the next 90 days. The spacecraft will not reenter Earth's atmosphere for at least 1,000 years.

"Like its predecessor Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 provided one of the most comprehensive pictures of changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean, including the comings and goings of El Nino and La Nina events," said Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason-1 project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "These Pacific Ocean climate cycles are responsible for major shifts in sea level, ocean temperatures and rainfall every two to five years and can sometimes be so large that worldwide weather patterns are affected. Jason-1 data have been instrumental in monitoring and predicting these ever-changing cycles."

In the spring of 2012, based on concern over the limited redundancy of Jason-1's aging control systems, NASA and CNES moved the satellite into its planned final "graveyard" orbit, depleted its extra fuel and reconfigured the mission to make observations that will improve our knowledge of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, in addition to delivering its oceanographic data products.

The first full 406-day marine gravity mission was completed on June 17. The resulting data have already led to the discovery of numerous small seamounts, which are underwater mountains that rise above the deep-sea floor. The data also have significantly increased the resolution of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, while increasing our knowledge of ocean bathymetry, which is the underwater depth of the ocean floor.

JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. CNES manages the French portion of the mission.

For more information on Jason-1, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com .

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Steve Cole / JPL / Alan Buis / Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, Paris, France / Julien Watelet.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Mars Rover Opportunity Passes Half-Way Point to Next Destination

NASA - Mars Exploration Rover B "Opportunity" (MER-B) patch.

July 3, 2013

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven more than half of the distance needed to get from a site where it spent 22 months to its next destination.

The rover has less than half a mile (800 meters) to go to finish a 1.2-mile (2-kilometer) dash from one crater-rim segment, where it worked since mid-2011, to another, where mission controllers intend to keep Opportunity busy during the upcoming Martian winter.

Opportunity departed the southern tip of the "Cape York" segment six weeks ago and headed south for "Solander Point." Both are raised portions of the western rim of 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater, offering access to older geological deposits than the rover visited during its first seven years on Mars. Opportunity was launched from Florida on July 7, 2003, EDT (July 8, UTC). It landed on Mars Jan. 24, 2004, PDT (Jan. 25, EDT and UTC).

Image above: This view shows the terrain that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is crossing in a flat area called "Botany Bay" on the way toward "Solander Point," which is visible on the horizon. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

A flatter area called Botany Bay separates Cape York from Solander Point.

"We are making very good progress crossing 'Botany Bay,'" said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who is project manager for the nearly decade-old mission.

The terrain is favorable for the trek.

"The surface that Opportunity is driving across in Botany Bay is polygonally fractured outcrop that is remarkably good for driving," said Brad Joliff, an Opportunity science team member and long-term planner at Washington University in St. Louis. "The plates of outcrop, like a tiled mosaic pavement, have a thin covering of soil, not enough to form the wind-blown ripples we've had to deal with during some other long treks. The outcrop plates are light-toned, and the cracks between them are filled with dark, basaltic soil and our old friends the 'blueberries.'"

The BB-size spherules nicknamed "blueberries" are hematite-rich, erosion-resistant concretions that Opportunity discovered at its landing site and continued seeing on much of the ground between there and Endeavour Crater.

Mars Exploration Rover B "Opportunity" (MER-B). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rise of Solander Point to the south gives the team a very visible destination during the drive. That destination offers both a tall cross section of rock layers for examination and also an expanse of terrain that includes a north-facing slope, which is favorable for the solar-powered rover to stay active and mobile through the coming Martian southern-hemisphere winter.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. For more about Spirit and Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Comet ISON Brings Holiday Fireworks

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

July 2, 2013

This July Fourth the solar system is showing off some fireworks of its own.

Superficially resembling a skyrocket, comet ISON is hurtling toward the sun presently at a whopping 48,000 mph.

Hubble View of Comet ISON

Video above: Hubble View of Comet ISON. Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds. The comet travels 34,000 miles in this brief video, or 7 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon. The deep-space visitor streaks silently against the background stars.

Unlike a firework, the comet is not combusting, but in fact is pretty cold. Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus, which is surrounded by a bright star-like-looking coma. The pressure of the solar wind sweeps the material into a tail, like a breeze blowing a windsock.

As the comet warms as it moves closer to the sun, its rate of sublimation (a process similar to evaporation in which solid matter transitions directly into gas) will increase. The comet will get brighter and its tail will grow longer. The comet is predicted to reach naked-eye visibility in November.

The comet is named after the organization that discovered it, the Russia-based International Scientific Optical Network.

Image above: This false-color, visible-light image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington, D.C.

Related Links:
NASA's Asteroids and Comet Watch website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/main/index.html

More on this image from the Space Telescope Science Institute: 1 / 2: http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/24 and http://heritage.stsci.edu/2013/24

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

For more information about NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA / Space Telescope Science Institute / Ray Villard / Zolt Levay.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Inseparable Galactic Twins

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

July 2, 2013

Image above: The galaxy pair MRK 1034. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA (acknowledgement, Judy Schmidt).

Looking towards the constellation of Triangulum (The Triangle), in the northern sky, lies the galaxy pair MRK 1034. The two very similar galaxies, named PGC 9074 and PGC 9071, are close enough to one another to be bound together by gravity, although no gravitational disturbance can yet be seen in the image. These objects are probably only just beginning to interact gravitationally.

Both are spiral galaxies, and are presented to our eyes face-on, so we are able to appreciate their distinctive shapes. On the left of the image, spiral galaxy PGC 9074 shows a bright bulge and two spiral arms tightly wound around the nucleus, features which have led scientists to classify it as a type Sa galaxy. Close by, PGC 9071 — a type Sb galaxy — although very similar and almost the same size as its neighbor, has a fainter bulge and a slightly different structure to its arms: their coils are further apart.

The spiral arms of both objects clearly show dark patches of dust obscuring the light of the stars lying behind, mixed with bright blue clusters of hot, recently-formed stars. Older, cooler stars can be found in the glowing, compact yellowish bulge towards the center of the galaxy. The whole structure of each galaxy is surrounded by a much fainter round halo of old stars, some residing in globular clusters.

Gradually, these two neighbors will attract each other, the process of star formation will be increased and tidal forces will throw out long tails of stars and gas. Eventually, after maybe hundreds of millions of years, the structures of the interacting galaxies will merge together into a new, larger galaxy.

The images combined to create this picture were captured by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

For more information about NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA / NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Cluster discovers steady leak in Earth's plasmasphere‏

ESA - Cluster II Mission patch.

02 July 2013

A steady wind, discovered by ESA's Cluster mission, is slowly escaping from Earth's plasmasphere - the torus of plasma that surrounds our planet's atmosphere. The outflow amounts to almost 90 tonnes a day. Predicted by theory two decades ago, this is one of the main mechanisms that replenishes Earth's magnetosphere with fresh plasma.

The environment that surrounds Earth, beyond the outermost layers of the atmosphere, is strongly shaped by the magnetic field of our planet. There, space is filled with electrons and positive ions, which move along the magnetic field lines. The interaction between Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind produces the complex topography of the magnetosphere.

The innermost part of the magnetosphere is a doughnut-shaped region called the plasmasphere, which is centred around the Earth's equator and rotates along with it. This plasmasphere, whose toroidal shape is forged by the magnetic field of Earth, exchanges mass and energy with the outer layers of the magnetosphere, and scientists have been studying the details of the interaction between these two regions.

Animation of the plasmaspheric wind. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

"We have long known that the plasmasphere supplies material to the outer magnetosphere," explains Iannis Dandouras from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (a joint CNRS and Université Paul Sabatier institute) in Toulouse, France.

"However, up until now we could only see this happening during sporadic, localised and powerful events that we call plumes."

Analysing data from ESA's Cluster mission, Dandouras has discovered another source of the supply: a steady wind that continuously transfers material from the plasmasphere into the magnetosphere. The results of his study are published in Annales Geophysicae.

"Now we have finally found proof of a permanent and continuous leakage of material from the plasmasphere outwards," he says.

"It is something similar to what happens also around the Sun, when the solar corona expands outwards at equatorial latitudes and gives rise to the solar wind."

Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Scientists had suspected that such a plasmaspheric wind must exist ever since the first observations of plume events in the early 1990s. Plumes are dense columns of plasma that form in the plasmasphere when it is hit by a geomagnetic storm – a disturbance in Earth's magnetic environment caused by sudden changes in the solar wind. After they form, plumes expand outwards and eventually burst, releasing large amounts of fresh plasma in the outer layers of the magnetosphere.

"When a plume strikes out, it partially drains the plasmasphere, which is then replenished with plasma coming from Earth's ionosphere, the top layer of the atmosphere," explains Dandouras.

Early studies of plumes monitored how long it took to refill the plasmasphere after such an event.

"Surprisingly, this process took much longer than expected, like trying to fill up a leaky container."

In 1992 two scientists approached the problem from a theoretical point of view. When Joseph Lemaire, from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels, Belgium, was visiting Robert Schunk at Utah State University, USA, they tried to simulate this puzzling finding by investigating the interplay of forces in the plasmasphere. Their study revealed a net imbalance between three players: the gravitational attraction due to Earth's mass, the centrifugal force caused by its rotation and the pressure exerted by the plasma. As a result of the imbalance, an instability develops, driving the plasma outwards.

The plasmasphere in Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The instability predicted by the work of Lemaire and Schunk is continuous rather than episodic, and takes the form of a wind of plasma. The wind is continuously flowing radially out of the doughnut-shaped plasmasphere and into the surrounding layers of the magnetosphere.

It was Lemaire who first introduced Dandouras to this particular problem.

"We were chatting about the plasmasphere at a workshop a few years ago, when Joseph Lemaire mentioned his and Schunk's prediction of this wind," remembers Dandouras.

"Quite some time had passed after their work had been published, yet only indirect evidence was found to support their prediction. As an experimental space scientist, this triggered my curiosity immediately.

"The Cluster mission was already operating and collecting data at the time, and we both agreed that the Cluster Ion Spectrometry experiment (CIS) would be the perfect tool to verify directly whether the plasmasphere is actually leaking."

The plasmaspheric wind is expected to be blowing at all times, regardless of the activity of the magnetosphere; in contrast, plumes only arise when Earth's magnetic environment is highly active. So Dandouras dug into the Cluster archive looking for data that had been gathered during quiet magnetospheric times.

"The inquiry was a very delicate process: if at all present, this wind would be very weak, and it would be really challenging to single it out from the overall distribution of the low-energy ions that make up the plasmasphere," says Dandouras.

But the high sensitivity of the CIS experiment proved crucial to the study, along with a specially developed filtering technique.

The plasmaspheric wind. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

"After long scrutiny of the data, there it was, a slow but steady wind, releasing about 1 kg of plasma every second into the outer magnetosphere: this corresponds to almost 90 tonnes every day. It was definitely one of the nicest surprises I've ever had!"

At this rate, the mass loss is a negligible contribution to the depletion of Earth's atmosphere, whose mass amounts to over 1018 kg. However, this constant outflow plays a significant role in the supply of plasma to the outer magnetosphere, surpassed in efficiency only by the solar wind, which is also a steady source, and by the occasional and powerful plumes.

"This discovery confirms that Earth's ionosphere and plasmasphere feed the magnetosphere on a regular basis, and not only during active periods," comments Philippe Escoubet, Cluster Project Scientist at ESA. "This allows us to study Earth's atmospheric loss in great detail and to compare it with similar phenomena that occur on other planets in the Solar System at different rates, depending on the intensity of each planet's magnetic field."

Notes for editors:

The study presented here is based on data gathered with the Cluster Ion Spectrometry (CIS) experiment on board the Cluster spacecraft on three occasions in 2001, on two occasions in 2002 and once in 2006.

Cluster is a constellation of four spacecraft flying in formation around Earth. It is the first space mission able to study, in three dimensions, the natural physical processes occurring within and in the near vicinity of the Earth's magnetosphere. Launched in 2000, it is composed of four identical spacecraft orbiting the Earth in a pyramidal configuration, along a nominal polar orbit of 4 × 19.6 Earth radii (1 Earth radius = 6380 km). Cluster's payload consists of state-of-the-art plasma instrumentation to measure electric and magnetic fields over wide frequency ranges, and key physical parameters characterising electrons and ions from energies of near 0 eV to a few MeV. The science operations are coordinated by the Joint Science Operations Centre (JSOC) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom, and implemented by ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany.

Related publications:

I. Dandouras, "Detection of a plasmaspheric wind in the Earth's magnetosphere by the Cluster spacecraft", 2013, Annales Geophysicae, 31, 1143-1153, doi:10.5194/angeo-31-1143-2013:
http://sci.esa.int/cluster/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51993

J. F. Lemaire & R. W. Schunk, "Plasmaspheric wind", 1992, Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, vol. 54, p. 467-477: http://sci.esa.int/cluster/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51980

Related links:
Space Weather: http://sci.esa.int/cluster/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=33273

Cluster Mission Home: http://sci.esa.int/cluster

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / ATG medialab.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Launch of Indian PSLV C22 Rocket with IRNSS-1 satellite

ISRO - Indian Space Research Organization logo.


July 2, 2013

 Launch of Indian PSLV C22 Rocket with IRNSS-1

An Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) succesfully launched from India today, July 1st 2013 at 18:11 UTC carrying the first of seven IRNSS satellites into orbit. Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will provide real time navigation and time data to multiple users.

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) description. Image credit: thehindu.com

This was the very first night launch of the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle which uses four stages.

Image above: India has successfully put the country’s first Navigation Satellite into orbit on Monday. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s East coast at 18:11 UTC and made a flawless ascent mission delivering the IRNSS-1A spacecraft to its intended orbit about 20 minutes after launch. The flight was declared a complete success – marking the birth of India’s own navigation constellation, the Indian Regional Navigation System that will cover the country and surrounding areas. Credit ISRO.

Image above: LIFTOFF of an Indian PSLV from Satish Dhawan carrying India’s first navigation satellite. India’s first navigation satellite has arrived in orbit. Photo Screen Capture from ISRO TV.

 Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). Credit: ISRO

 For more information about Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), visit: http://www.isro.org/

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: ISRO / ISRO TV.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch