[meteorite-list] Indian Spacecraft Soars on Historic Journey To Mars (MOM)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 06:44:28 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201311051444.rA5EiSMj007563_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/pslv/c25/131105launch/

Indian spacecraft soars on historic journey to Mars
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
November 5, 2013

India's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off Tuesday with
the country's first Mars mission, a low-budget project marking India's
foray into an elite club of space powers.

The 146-foot-tall rocket, specifically tailored for the Mars mission,
launched at 0908 GMT (4:08 a.m. EST) Tuesday from the Satish Dhawan Space
Center, India's spaceport on Sriharikota Island about 50 miles north of
Chennai.

The launch took place at 2:38 p.m. local time, and the PSLV's six-strap
on boosters and core solid-fueled motor combined to produce more than
2 million pounds of thrust to push the rocket through low-level clouds
on an easterly course over the Bay of Bengal.

A live broadcast of the launch beamed around the world showed spectators
in the control center applauding as the rocket hit its marks during a
44-minute mission ending with the deployment of the 2,950-pound Mars-bound
probe at 0952 GMT (4:52 a.m. EST).

The launch marked the 25th PSLV mission since 1993 and its 21st consecutive
success.

"I'm extremely happy to announce that the PSLV-C25 vehicle has placed
the Mars orbiter spacecraft very precisely into an elliptical orbit around
Earth," said K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization.
"This is the 25th flight of our PSLV, and it has been a new and complex
mission design to ensure that we would be able to move the Mars orbiter
spacecraft from the orbit of Earth to the orbit of Mars with minimum energy."

The PSLV placed the Mars probe in an orbit with a low point of 153 miles
and a high point of 14,643 miles, very close to the rocket's target parameters,
according to Kunhi Krishnan, the PSLV's mission director.

"PSLV has once again proven its mettle that it can perform any kind of
mission," said S. Ramakrishnan, director of India's Vikram Sarabhai Space
Center, a rocket development facility. "This was only the first step for
this Mars mission ... [but] crossing this major first milestone is very
important to us."

Indian officials confirmed the spacecraft deployed its solar panels to
generate power following launch.

The flawless launch did not put the Mars probe on a direct course to the
red planet. Six firings of the probe's on-board propulsion system, derived
from a thruster demonstrated on India's communications satellites, will
raise the spacecraft's orbit over the next few weeks and send it on a
trajectory to escape the grasp of Earth's gravity. Radhakrishnan said
the final Earth departure maneuver is scheduled for Dec. 1.

"Then in September 2014, we expect this spacecraft to be around Mars,
and the challenge then is to precisely reduce the velocity and get into
orbit. Once that is achieved, we have five beautiful scientific instruments,
and we expect to provide scientific knowledge to the Indian scientific
community and to humanity."

Developed in less than two years for $73 million, the Mars Orbiter Mission
aims to make ISRO the fourth space agency to put a probe into orbit around
Mars, following in the footsteps of the United States, Russia and the
European Space Agency.

"I want to salute the entire ISRO community who made this possible in
a very limited time," Radhakrishnan said in post-launch remarks at the
PSLV control center in Sriharikota.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued his congratulations on the
launch.

"I congratulate all scientists of the Indian Space Research Organization
for the successful launch today of the Mars Orbiter Mission, the most
complex space mission of the country," Singh said in a statement. "The
successful launch is the first step towards a successful mission and is
testimony to ISRO's mastery of the launch vehicle technology.

"I wish the ISRO scientists all the best for the delicate next steps in
this ambitious and long mission to Mars which will be the most significant
milestone in our space program and I remain confident that they will do
the country proud," Singh said.

The probe's arrival at Mars is fixed on Sept. 24, 2014, when the spacecraft's
main engine will ignite to guide itself into a unique high-altitude orbit
around the red planet.

Operating from a perch taking the spacecraft from just above the Martian
atmosphere to a peak altitude of nearly 50,000 miles, the Mars probe will
survey the planet with five science instruments, gathering data on the
history of the Martian climate and the mineral make-up of its surface.

The mission carries a color imaging camera to return medium-resolution
pictures of the Martian surface, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure
the chemical composition of the surface, and instruments to assess the
Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector.

Scientific assessments of methane in the Martian atmosphere have returned
mixed results.

Methane is a potential indicator of current microbial life on Mars, but
some types of geologic activity can also produce trace levels of the gas.

Following up on detections from ground-based telescopes and Europe's Mars
Express orbiter, NASA's Curiosity rover measured no methane in the Martian
atmosphere when it sucked air into its internal instrument suite on several
occasions since landing in August 2012.

"One of the important objectives of the scientific part of this mission
is to see the presence of methane or otherwise," Radhakrishnan told India's
NDTV television network before launch. "We have an instrument for that
purpose. We also want to see, if methane is present, is it because of
geological activity or biological activity?"

But the mission's primary objective is not scientific; it is technological.

"First and foremost, India should be able to orbit a spacecraft around
Mars," Radhakrishnan told NDTV before launch. "We are moving from Earth's
orbit to the orbit of Mars through a long cruise phase around the sun.
It's almost 400 million kilometers (248 million miles) away, and the spacecraft
has to travel nearly 780 million kilometers (484 million miles)."

Indian engineers added autonomous capabilities to the spacecraft to account
for the communications lag between Earth and Mars, which will be as much
as 21 minutes during the mission. The probe is designed to detect faults
and put itself into safe mode if something goes wrong, a feature officials
say will ensure the spacecraft is in a stable configuration while ground
controllers resolve problems.

In an effort to reduce the risk of a long-distance mission to Mars, engineers
authored new software code and added redundant components to the probe's
propulsion system to ensure it would survive the 10-month cruise and still
function for the make-or-break orbit insertion burn.

NASA is helping India with navigation and communications support from
experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees all of the U.S.
missions currently at Mars.

NASA's Deep Space Network antennas will track the Indian probe throughout
the mission, helping Indian engineers and scientists collect telemetry
on the spacecraft's health and reap the benefits of its scientific data.

India's Mars mission launch comes less than two weeks before NASA's next
Mars orbiter is set to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission is scheduled
for launch Nov. 18 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. MAVEN
will arrive at Mars two days before India's orbiter to survey the red
planet's atmosphere for at least one year.

Bruce Jakosky, the University of Colorado scientist in charge of MAVEN's
research mission, said U.S. and Indian officials have held preliminary
discussions to collaborate on some overlapping objectives once the spacecraft
arrive at Mars.
Received on Tue 05 Nov 2013 09:44:28 AM PST