Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have been able to get some craters named on planet Mars with Indian antecedents. All in an effort to bring back happy memories of India’s maiden outing to Mars using the robotic satellite Mangalyaan and scientists are hoping that sooner than later the government may clear India’s next mission to Mars through, Mangalyaan-2, which could include a soft landing on Mars.
A crater has been named ‘Lal’ on the Red Planet and it is named after the legendary Indian physicist Professor Devendra Lal who headed the cradle of ISRO, the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad. Professor Lal spearheaded PRL from 1972-1983.
He was a cosmic ray physicist who also loved chemistry. He later moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California. A crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars with a diameter of 69 kilometres has been named ‘Lal’.
The ISRO team published the work of the discovery of the craters and its significance in a scientific journal named ICARUS and they say the scientific importance of this finding is that it also confirms that Mars was once wet and water has flown on the surface.
Two small superimposed craters, on either side of Lal Crater, named as Mursan and Hilsa, provide the timeline for the infilling process of the Lal Crater and suggest that the infilling has been episodic. Also, this discovery provides compelling evidence that the water has moved large volumes of sediment into the crater now named as “Lal Crater”.
These craters are situated in the Tharsis volcanic region on Mars. On the recommendation of the PRL, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approved naming the three craters on Mars’ says a statement by PRL.
Another crater has been named ‘Mursan’ which is approximately a 10 km wide crater and superimposed on the eastern side of the rim of the Lal crater. It is named after a town in Uttar Pradesh.
Mursan is a small with a population of 11,500 as per the latest census. It’s located about 200 kilometres from Delhi in the district of Hathras (now named Mahamaya Nagar District) in UP.
The name Mursan had been chosen since it is the birthplace of the current director of PRL, Dr Anil Bharadwaj, who is a recognised planetary scientist. “Small craters on Mars can only be named after small towns, hence the team zeroed in Mursan,” says Mr Bharadwaj, adding that his Indian passport proudly carries Mursan as his birthplace.
The third crater to be named recently is called “Hilsa”, it is also approximately 10 km wide and superimposed on the western side of the rim of the Lal crater. It is named after a town in Bihar. Incidentally, Hilsa is the birthplace of Dr Rajeev Ranjan Bharti, a scientist at PRL and the person who is part of the team that discovered these new craters on the Red Planet.
India launched its highly successful maiden mission to Mars named Mangalyaan in 2013 and even before it reached the Red Planet, there were some craters with Indian names like the ‘Lonar’ crater. Lonar, 11.3 km in diameter, is possibly named after Maharashtra’s scenic town which was formed after an asteroid strike.
The crater ‘Poona’ is 20 km in diameter and is named after the modern-day Pune city in Maharashtra.
Yet another crater, ‘Kakori’, has possibly derived its name from a town near Lucknow which shot to fame during the Independence movement. More recently another crater ‘Ramanathan Crater’ was named after the first director of PRL.
India could well be visiting Mars again, Mr Bharadwaj says ‘Mangalyaan-2’ is at a conceptual stage and design work is going on at ISRO.
It would be a follow-up mission to the maiden ‘Mars Orbiter Mission’ (MOM) and could include a soft landing with an Indian rover thrown for good measure and ideas on sending a helicopter are also being considered.
“Soft landing on Mars is tougher,” says Mr Bharadwaj. He explains that Mars has a thin atmosphere and this causes heating of the spacecraft, but important lessons have been learnt from the successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 and teams are working on all leads.
Indian scientists want to explore the Red Planet more intensively with the hope that like Chandrayaan-1 made the epochal finding of the presence of water molecules on the parched surface of Moon, completely changing the geological understanding of our nearest celestial neighbour, Mangalyaan-2 may provide clinching evidence of the presence of water on Mars.
