India's 1,350-kilogram
(nearly 3,000-pound) orbiter will now circle the planet for at least six
months, with five solar-powered instruments 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 in large quantities.
It also will search
Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also
come from geological processes. None of the instruments will send back enough
data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help
them better understand how planets form, what conditions might make life
possible and where else in the universe it might exist.
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