‘Exciting that Mangalyaan may fly through a tail of comet’

India’s mars mission Mangalyaan is carrying with it five scientific instruments, one of them is an atom and molecule analyser called in scientific mumbo-jumbo – the Mars Exospheric Neutral Component Analyser (MENCA). Speaking to NDTV’s Science Editor Pallava Bagla, Dr Anil Bharadwaj, the man heading the team for this instrument, said the Mars mission may get a bonus when it passes through the tail of Comet ‘Siding Spring’ when it nears Mars in 2014. If this happens, India’s mission could well be at the right place at the right time.

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