The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has handed over the Mars Orbiter Mission Satellite Structure to ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) here recently. The mission is aimed at studying the climate, geology, origin and evolution of the red planet. “The satellite structure is an assembly of composite and metallic honeycomb sandwich panels with a central composite cylinder,” says R K Tyagi, Chairman, HAL. The assembly work was carried out at HAL’s Aerospace Division in Bangalore. ISRO will build the other satellite subsystems and scientific payload onto this structure. The completed satellite will ultimately embark on a nine-month voyage to orbit planet Mars. During its orbit, the satellite will be at a distance of 54.6 million kms from Earth: the farthest any Indian satellite would have travelled.
ISRO has already announced that it plans to undertake the Mars mission in November next year. ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan had on Monday last said that the Mars mission would be launched on November 27, 2013, when the red planet would be closer to Earth. “We plan to put a spacecraft in an elliptical orbit for studying its atmosphere and detect presence of life on its surface,” Radhakrishnan had then told reporters then. The Rs 470-crore ($81 million) Mars mission would demonstrate India’s capability to send a spacecraft 55 million km away and look for life-sustaining elements on the Martian surface.
“The Mars mission will make India join the elite club of five top nations comprising the US, Russia, Europe, China and Japan, with indigenous technology for a 300-day space voyage from the launch date,” Radhakrishnan said.
