Mangalyaan, India’s Orbiter to Mars zoomed out of the Earth’s sphere of influence while cruising in the sun orbit on its 10 ‐month long voyage to the red planet. “The Mars Orbiter has traversed beyond the earth’s sphere of influence, which extends up to 925,000 km in the interplanetary space at 1.14am,” said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Exiting from the Earth’s sphere of influence means the spacecraft is out of its gravitational pull and free to cruise in the 680 ‐million km solar orbit to reach Mars in mid‐September 2014. “Though sun’s gravity dominates the solar system owing to its massive size, only very near to planets, the planetary gravity becomes stronger than that of sun and is referred as the sphere of influence,” ISRO said.

 Source: Times of India

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