“What is red, is a planet and is the focus of my orbit?”, a 13-word debut tweet by ISRO’s @MarsOrbiter at 8.02 am on Wednesday, was an instant hit on Twitter. The picture with that tweet said: “I’m in the Martian Orbit”.
Thirty-one minutes after that at 8.33 am, NASA’s @MarsCuriosity welcomed it with a 14-word tweet with “Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India’s first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit.”
At 9.02 am, @MarsOrbiter replied: “Howdy @MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch. I’ll be around.” According to a blog post on Twitter India, @MarsOrbiter gained over 55,000 followers within hours of its announcement on Twitter.
The blog post said that the exchange between @MarsOrbiter and @MarsCuriosity was an interstellar hit with over 15,000 re-tweets between them.
In between these conversations, at 8.44 am there was one more tweet with @MarsOrbiter tweeting: “I’ll be back after breakfast. Good ol’ sunlight. It’s good for your battery.”
On Twitter, @MarsOrbiter explains that it “Loves science, photography and long cruises”.