New Delhi: India's first interplanetary probe completes 100 days of its mission on Wednesday. The Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, which was launched by PSLV-C25 at 1438 hours on November 5, 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, is in its voyage towards Mars, the mission successfully completes 100 days in space today. Isro said the health parameters of all the payloads are normal.
The spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one-way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds. After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014.
Subsequent to six orbit raising manoeuvres around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection (TMI) Manoeuvre on December 1, 2013 gave necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric orbit. This journey, of course, is long wherein the spacecraft has to travel 680 million km out of which a travel of 190 million km is completed so far.
The First Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was conducted on December 11, 2013. The trajectory of the spacecraft, till today, is as expected. Three more TCM operations are planned around April 2014, August 2014 and September 2014, said Isro.
The health of the spacecraft is normal. It is continuously monitored by the ground station of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), located at Byalalu, near Bangalore. Except for a 40 minute break in the telemetry data received from the spacecraft to the ground station, data has been continuously available for all the 100 days.
The propulsion system of the spacecraft is configured for TCMs and the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) Operation. On February 6, 2014, all the five payloads on Mars Orbiter spacecraft were switched 'ON' to check their health.
The health parameters of all the payloads are normal. At present, the spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds. After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24, 2014.
The main objective of India's launch is to check whether Mars ever had an environment in which life evolved and to explore Mars' surface, topography, minerology and atmosphere.
India’s MOM, besides technological objectives, also has ambitious science goals as well, including a search for methane, the gas should last about 200 years on Mars. On Earth, the chemical is strongly tied to life and a Reuters report stated that Methane, which also can be produced by non-biological processes, was first detected in the Martian atmosphere a decade ago.
The Mars orbiter will be the first Isro’s first spacecraft to exit the sphere of the Earth’s influence, to the tune of around 925,000km, and enter a heliocentric cruise phase where the gravitational tugs of the Sun and the other planets will dominate. The 10-month journey will be crucial and challenging and reports noted that less than half the around 50 spacecraft sent by other countries towards Mars have been able to completed it.
The Rs 450 crore mission, the lowest in the history of Mars Mission in the World, was actually initiated in 2010 and it includes Rs 110 crore for building PSLV-C25 that would launch the Rs 150 crore spacecraft, while the balance spent on augmenting ground facilities, including those required for deep space communication.
Only a third of all the missions to the red planet have tasted success. Locking horns with this red dot in the skies is excruciatingly challenging in terms of the technological mettle required in the domains of Navigation, propulsion System design, deep space communication systems, ground segment and thermal and radiation management.
