On Mars Orbiter Mission’s (MOM) second anniversary of Mars arrival, ISRO has (finally!) made available to the public data from its first year in orbit. As expected, there are no dramatically new science results. The most anticipated results were from the Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), which unfortunately hasn’t found any methane on the planet. This does not necessarily imply that there is no methane at Mars, only that MSM is likely not sensitive enough to sense trace amounts of methane that are present.

Other payloads include the Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), which studies the abundance of deuterium and hydrogen in the atmosphere, the Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIIS) to study and map the mineral surface of Mars, and the Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), a neutral gas spectrometer. MENCA’s science results were already published in a paper in March.

The Mars Color Camera (MCC) has captured a variety of wide-angle views. It takes MOM a little over three days to complete one orbit of Mars, and the camera typically takes at most four pictures per day. The spacecraft has an extremely elliptical orbit with a periapsis altitude of 343 kilometers and an apoapsis altitude of 71,191 kilometers. As it swings around Mars, it can see the full disk or closer images. There are more than 500 images available to play with. They can be downloaded from the website at reduced resolution in PNG format, or in 16- and 32-bit archival formats. However, the website is buggy, with frequent timeouts and freezes.

The images have incredible detail, and show surface features and dust patterns clearly.