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India releases blurry image of giant Mars craters

Indian school children pose for photographs with a poster of Mars Orbiter Mission satellite as they celebrate its success in Chennai, India, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers. (AP Photo/Arun Sankar K) Indian school children pose for photographs with a poster of Mars Orbiter Mission satellite as they celebrate its success in Chennai, India, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers. (AP Photo/Arun Sankar K)

By Associated Press September 25, 2014 1 min read

NEW DELHI (AP) – India’s space agency has released an image of Mars taken by the nation’s first interplanetary spacecraft.

The blurry image showing a surface pockmarked with giant craters was taken after the Martian Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, took its position above the red planet.

The Indian Space and Research Organisation says the satellite was about 7,300 kilometers (4,536 miles) from the planet’s surface when the image was snapped on Wednesday. It takes about 12 minutes for the digital data to reach Earth.

Space agency scientists released the image Thursday after first showing it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.