(Washington DC – January 12, 2015) The National Space Society takes great pleasure in announcing that its 2015 Space Pioneer Award in the Science and Engineering category has been won by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Programme Team. This award will be presented to an ISRO representative during the National Space Society’s 2015 International Space Development Conference (http://isdc.nss.org/2015/), the 34th ISDC, to be held in Toronto, Canada, at the Hyatt Regency Toronto (downtown). The Conference will run from May 20-24, 2015.
The annual Space Pioneer awards recognize those individuals and teams whose accomplishments have helped to open the space frontier. The awards are divided into thirteen categories. The intent is to recognize those who have made significant contributions in different fields of endeavor to “develop a spacefaring civilization that will establish communities beyond the Earth.”
About ISRO Mars Orbiter Programme Team and the Mars Orbiter Mission
The mission was launched on Nov 5, 2003 and went into Mars orbit on Sept 24, 2014. This mission has achieved two significant mission firsts. (1) An Indian spacecraft has gone into orbit around Mars on the very first try (on Sept 24, 2014). No other country has ever done this. (2) The spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit with a high apoapsis, and has a high resolution camera which is taking full-disk color imagery of Mars. Very few full disk images have ever been taken in the past, mostly on approach to the planet, as most imaging is done looking straight down in mapping mode. These images will aid planetary scientists. The Mars Orbiter programme team located in Bangalore, India, is headed by Dr. Mylswamy Annadurai.