Mangalyaan carried a compact 15 kg scientific payload of five instruments, chosen to study the Martian surface, atmosphere and exosphere — and to hunt for methane.
Captured colour images of the Martian surface and its two moons. From its far orbit it produced striking full-disk views of Mars and returned over 1,000 images.
Designed to detect trace amounts of methane in the atmosphere — a gas that on Earth is often linked to biological or geological activity.
Measured surface temperature and thermal emission to map the composition and mineralogy of the Martian surface, day and night.
Measured the relative abundance of hydrogen and deuterium in the upper atmosphere — a clue to how Mars lost its water over billions of years.
A quadrupole mass spectrometer that sampled the composition of the Martian exosphere — the tenuous outermost layer of the atmosphere.
Together these instruments studied Mars from the ground up — surface, lower atmosphere, and the escaping upper atmosphere — all within a mass budget smaller than a checked suitcase.
Because of its wide, elliptical orbit, Mangalyaan offered a vantage point that complemented other Mars orbiters — imaging the whole planet at once and studying how the thin Martian atmosphere behaves and escapes into space.