Destination Mars: Mangalyaan enters the last leg of its journey

Photo by India times

It is a tiny spacecraft by interplanetary standards, but size does not matter in this endeavour. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is not trying to do exotic scientific experiments on Mars at the moment.

This mission is simply to test the organisation's ability to take something all the way up to Mars, keep it in good health during the journey, and make it go around the planet. Doing experiments while orbiting Mars is useful, but it is not the core part of the mission.

 
On Monday next week, ISRO will face one of the biggest tests of this complicated project. It will switch on the engine that has been lying dormant for 10 months, and fire it for four seconds to slow down the spacecraft.

If it fires and performs well, ISRO will fire it for a longer duration two days later and ease the spacecraft into an orbit around Mars. If it fails to ignite on September 22, the space organisation will nudge the spacecraft's path towards a Martian orbit by firing eight  smaller thrusters on September 24. In either case, barring completely unexpected situations, the Mars orbiter is expected to reach its destination within a week.

Apart from a small glitch a few days after launch, the mission has gone very smoothly. The spacecraft has completed 98 per cent of its journey, and its trajectory is so close to the intended path that ISRO did not have to do a correction exercise planned for last month. 

"We have crossed several situations that we have not faced before," says ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan. "We are now preparing for all contingencies on September 24."

The Mars mission, as planned by ISRO, was a sophisticated exercise. Compared to other Mars missions, ISRO had a smaller rocket and payload. This reduced the cost significantly but increased the mission's complexity. Other Mars missions are not planned this way.

The Maven spacecraft of NASA, which will reach Mars a  few days before ISRO's orbiter, was on its way to the red planet directly after launch. All it required was a fiveminute push from the powerful upper stage of the rocket, just 27 minutes after lift-off. 

By India Times