In its quest to conquer the Red Planet, India on Wednesday created space history by becoming the first country in the world to enter Mars’ orbit in its debut attempt.
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission’s (MOM) spacecraft Mangalyaan traversed over 660 million km through deep space for over nine months to successfully reach the Red Planet’s orbit. With this, India joined an elite group of nations, the US, Russia and Europe, that have successfully sent probes to orbit or land on Mars, but after several failed attempts.
For instance, the first Chinese mission to Mars, called Yinghuo-1, failed in 2011. Earlier in 1998, the Japanese mission ran out of fuel and was lost.Asked whether the spacecraft has taken pictures of the Martian surface, a top Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official said: “ Images are being clicked. Data is being downloaded. The process is going on.”
Watched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ISRO scientists successfully ignited the main 440 Newton liquid Apogee Motor (lAM) and eight small thrusters that fired for 24-minutes from 7.17 am onwards and slowed down the speed of the Mangalyaan for it to slip into a smooth orbit around the Red Planet.
Scientists broke into wild cheers and congratulated each other after the 1,350 kg spacecraft was manoeuvred into its designated place, capping a 666 million km journey that began on November 5 last.“The spacecraft successfully entered the Martian orbit at 7.55 am and is located at about 515 km from its surface,” an ISRO scientist announced.
“Today MOM has met Mangal (Mars). Today Mangal has got MOM. From the time this mission was called MOM, I was sure that MOM won’t disappoint us,” Modi, who wore a red coloured jacket on the occasion, said announcing the Rs450-crore mission’s success, after nerve-wracking final moments at the command centre of ISRO here.
Modi congratulated the scientists and asked the people of India to celebrate this great national event. “History has been created today. We have achieved the near impossible. I congratulate all ISRO scientists and all my fellow Indians on this historic achievement. We are the first country to achieve this great feat on the first attempt. let us celebrate. The odds were stacked against us. Of the 51 missions attempted across the world so far, a mere 21 had succeeded. But we have prevailed,” he said.
“The entire country celebrates if India wins a cricket match. This is a big victory. let us celebrate the achievements of Indian space scientists,” the Prime Minister appealed.India’s Mars mission is “a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation” and we have gone beyond boundaries of human enterprise and imagination, he added.
Indigenously built by ISRO, Mangalyaan was made in just 15 months at a cost of Rs450-crore, the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken, and was launched from the space port at Sriharikota on 5 November last year.Today’s success will boost India’s five-decade-old space programme as the Indian mission to unravel the mysteries of Mars has enormous opportunities. With its proven capabilities ISRO can now look forward to capitalizing the space technology market.
The Mangalyaan will take 77 hours or 3.2 earth days to rotate around the Red Planet over the next six months and will study its surface and mineral composition and scan its atmosphere for methane gas in search of life-sustaining elements.According to ISRO scientists the spacecraft is expected to relay the images to help decipher why and how Mars lost its liquid water.
At the time of MOM’s orbital insertion, its signals took about 12 minutes and 28 seconds to reach Earth where it was received by NASA’s Deep Space Network Stations in Canberra and Goldstone which relayed the data in real time to ISRO’s station in Bangalore.
The first sign of success on the very last leg came when ISRO announced that the burn of engines on India’s Mars orbiter had been confirmed. “All engines of Mars orbiter are going strong. Burn confirmed,” ISRO said as it signaled history in the making.Igniting the main engine was critical as it had been lying dormant for about 300 days and was only woken up briefly for four seconds on Monday. A failure could have pushed the Mangalyaan into the deep depths of space.
Much of the spacecraft’s manoeuvre took place behind Mars as seen from Earth. That means that from a point four minutes into the burn being employed till three minutes after the scheduled end of the manoeuvre, teams on Earth had no view of the spacecraft’s progress.
The Mangalyaan will keep moving in an elliptical path for at least six months with its instruments sending their gleanings back home. The 1,350 kg spacecraft is equipped with five instruments, including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas, a colour camera and a thermal imaging spectrometer to map the surface and mineral wealth of the red planet.