Mangalyaan carrying 5 instruments including a Mars Colours Camera

New Delhi: A day after India became the first country to send a spacecraft to Mars in its first attempt, Mangalyaan has sent the first pictures of the red planet. The Mars Orbiter is carrying five instruments with it.

One of them is the Mars Colours Camera. The MCC is a tri-colour optical camera and weighs 1.4 kg.

This camera gives information about the red planet's surface and composition. It will also be used to probe the two moons of Mars.

The official Twitter handle of ISRO's Mars Orbiter uploaded a picture of Mars with the caption, "the view is nice up here," on Thursday. The spacecraft is now circling Mars in an orbit whose nearest point to the planet is at 421.7 km.