2. India’s first interplanetary mission, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter
named as Mangalyaan successfully lifted off towards Mars
from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 5 November 2013
“to carry out experiments and search for evidence of life on
the red planet.
3. “It is a historic moment for all of us. We have successfully put the
Mars Orbiter Spacecraft into an elliptical orbit as had been intended,
” K Radhakrishnan, Chairperson of the Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO), exulted from the control room. “I feel delighted
to announce that the spacecraft is in a good health,” he continued.
SK Shivakumar, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre, summed up the
Indian scientific community’s pride at the flight of the Mars Orbiter
Mission (MOM) . “Our baby is up in space looking for scientific objects.
We have a long way to go,” he said amidst loud applause.
Only the US, Europe, and Russia have sent probes that have orbited
or landed on Mars. Probes to Mars have a high failure rate and success will
be a boost for national pride, especially after a similar mission by China
failed to leave Earth’s orbit in 2011.
4. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), which is also known as Mangalyaan,
is a Mars orbiter, successfully launched on 4th November 2013 by Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission aims to develop the
technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of
an interplanetary mission. Mars is called Mangal and Tuesday is Mangalwar
hence the name Mangalyaan.
■ With the success of this mission, India will become the fourth country in
the world to have sent a spacecraft to Mars, which is about 225 million
kilometers away.
■ The total cost of the sending ‘Mangalyaan’ to Mars is about Rs. 460
crores, which includes the cost of building the spacecraft & the ground
radar stations near Bangalore.
5. ■ The Mangalyaan will take about 300 days to reach to its destination; an
orbit, which is closest to Mars at about 377 km and farthest from it at
about 80,000 km. The spacecraft will carry with it equipment for
communication, navigation, mission planning and management. This
equipment will eventually be helpful in exploring the surface features of
Mars, morphology, mineralogy and studying the atmosphere through
various indigenous scientific instruments.
■ With the success of the mission, India
will prove its ability to send a satellite to
Mars and establish itself as one of the
leaders in deep space exploration.
6. ■ The spacecraft structure and propulsion hardware configurations are similar
to Chandrayaan 1, which was country’s first successful robotic lunar probe that
operated from 2008 to 2009, with specific improvements and upgrades needed
for a Mars specific mission.
