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“Our baby is up in space. We have a long way to go,” said Isro Satellite Centre Director S K Shivakumar to loud applause after the launch of Mangalyaan, India’s maiden Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). Bundled together in his remark were the excitement of a successful launch, the story of a challenging journey that lay ahead for the mission and end of a long nervous countdown before the lift-off.
On Tuesday, even as India successfully placed its Mars orbiter spacecraft into the Earth’s elliptical orbit — the first step towards launching it to the Mars’ orbit — the country had achieved a major space research milestone. The PSLVC25, carrying Mangalyaan, blasted off at 2.38 pm on Tuesday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR), Sriharikota, along Andhra Pradesh’s coast and 118 km from Chennai. However, besides an all-round jubilation, there were voices from within and without, including of former Isro chief G Madhavan Nair, questioning the rationale of the expensive mission and pointing to flaws in preparedness.
The MOM is carrying five items of solar equipment to study the Martian weather, the amount of water Mars had and presence of methane, besides other things.
If the orbiter reaches its destination successfully — likely in September 2014 — Isro will become the fourth agency, and India the fifth country in the world, to achieve the feat.
After successful completion of the first step, Isro Chairman K Radhakrishnan said: “I am happy to announce that the PSLVC25 has placed the Mars orbiter spacecraft very precisely into an elliptical orbit around Earth. This is the 25th flight of our PSLV and it has been a new and complex mission design to ensure we are able to move the Mars orbiter spacecraft from the Earth’s orbit to the Mars’ with the least energy. I want to salute the entire Isro community, which made this possible in limited time.”
He added, over the next 10 days, the MOM’s apogee will be nearly 200,000 km. From December 1, the spacecraft would start the long and difficult voyage to the Mars’ orbit, where it would reach in September next year. The challenge was to precisely place it in the orbit. From the Mars’ orbit, the five payloads deployed in the spacecraft would start working to collect information for scientists, he said.
Former Isro chief Nair congratulated the launch team but also called the mission akin to “cutting the head to the hat”, as many compromises had been made. He pointed out that the instruments taken along did not fulfil many of the scientific objectives, the fuel was not adequate and the money spent on the mission could have been used for a better experiment.
“The journey from here to the Mars will be fulfilled, but we are not proving anything new.” He added there was a lot of similarity with the Moon mission, as type of the orbit-raising mission was similar to Chandrayaan. He added the government could, perhaps, utilise the resources to bolster its transponders and the Indian regional navigation system, which were bigger priority. With this, the country is just trying to say “we also ran”, he said, adding there were high chances of successfully reaching the Mars but there were doubts if the mission would break any new ground. “We need a dozen instruments to go to a closed-circular orbit, which is necessary for remote sensing of the Mars. However, since the Geo Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) was delayed, there was a compromise on instrument. The PSLV can carry only 4-5 instruments and there are problems with the fuel.”
Former President of India and renowned scientist A P J Abdul Kalam said he was confident Isro, with its technological strength, would meet the challenges ably. A former senior Isro official, too, believed in the usefulness of the challenging mission, but said: “Isro certainly needs to focus on Chandrayaan 2 and have a more powerful launch vehicle, etc. But this is not coming at the cost of those projects.” He also said there had been some differing subjective opinions on the merits of the mission, expenditure and effort. “Yes, in this kind of a mission, the failure rate is very high but even if we fail, the failure is going to teach us a lot.”
Other experts have pointed out that because of its limited instrument payload and mapping orbit, Mangalyaan is unlikely to add to the breadth or quality of data generated by other Mars missions. “If successful, Mangalyaan will replicate what Nasa (the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration) accomplished in the 1960s and 1970s,” Amitabha Ghosh, who chairs the science operations working group at the Nasa Mars Exploration Rover Mission, wrote in the Indian Express. He added this was admirable, but given that very few nations had successfully orbited Mars, it would hardly be a novel accomplishment in the world of technology. “Isro need not recreate what has already been done. To be relevant, it should chart its own unique trajectory of frontline discoveries that will leave an imprint on space science and technology.”
However, the mission was mostly cheered. Planning Commission member & former Isro chairman K Kasturirangan called it an “incredibly exciting” moment. “I think, the mission is extremely challenging, and demanding... You have been given just 15 months to take this mission to the first level. And, this is something unbelievable — 15 months for a space programme of this complexity and that achieved at a level demonstrated today...”
What added to the excitement were the live feeds from Isro, including on social media websites like Facebook. “Solar panel and reflector deployments have been completed successfully. The spacecraft has achieved the first orbit of 246.9 by 23,566.69 km around the Earth,” updated MOM’s Facebook page, which was closing in on 90,000 likes at the time of going to press. Isro would update information on the social media on a daily basis, Radhakrishnan said.
Anxious moments
At Sriharikota’s launch ground, as hundreds of spectators waited on terrace of various nearby buildings to watch the launch, the general mood was one of anxiety and hope blended together.
All systems of the launch vehicle had been switched on for the final eight-and-a-half-hour countdown starting 6:08 am on Tuesday. Less than two hours before the launch, MOM was completely wrapped in Gold (kapton multilayer insulation) and was ready to go.
At 2.38 pm, as planned, the rocket took off from the first launch pad at SHAR and emerged from behind the trees, steadily going up, leaving behind a trail of white smoke. Loud applause and cheers from spectators followed the rocket in its heads-on journey to the sky.
When the announcement of the successful launch came in, the mood in the control room turned celebratory, with scientists cheering and congratulating each other, some still keeping their eyes fixed on the control panels.
Over the weekend, while the country was celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights, hundreds of scientists at this remote island had been busy preparing for the launch. Moments before the blast-off on Tuesday, as India’s top space scientists sat before their computers, there was nervous anticipation in the mission control room.
A complex network of ground stations has been laid out for keeping an eye on the various phases of PSLVC25 — the launch, Earth-bound manoeuvres, the heliocentric phase, as well as the Martian phase. During the spacecraft’s voyage to Mars and its injection into an orbit around the planet, while Isro’s deep space communications facility at Byalalu in Karnataka will keep a close watch, Nasa’s ground stations in Goldstone (California), Madrid (Spain), and Canberra (Australia) will help achieve precise tracking.
Two ships — SCI Nalanda and SCI Yamuna — owned by Shipping Corporation of India took their positions to track the PSLV flight from the southern Pacific Ocean. “These will look for two crucial events during the launch — the ignition of the fourth stage of the PSLV and the separation of the spacecraft when it is injected into the Earth’s orbit.”
Tuesday’s launch was crucial because if the date was missed, the next possible window would have been January 2016 or May 2018. According to scientists, a rare trajectory — when the Earth, Mars and Sun form an angle of 44 degrees — can offer substantial minimum-energy opportunities and occurs only at intervals of about 780 days.
Before this, Russia, the US, Japan, Europe and China have launched their Mars orbiters. The main objective for India to launch it is checking whether Mars ever had an environment in which life evolved, and to explore Mars’ surface, topography, minerology and atmosphere.
Besides technological objectives, India’s MOM has ambitious scientific goals as well, including a search for methane — the gas should last about 200 years on Mars. On the Earth, the chemical is strongly tied to life. A recent Reuters report said Methane, which can also be produced by non-biological processes, was first detected in the Martian atmosphere a decade ago.
Challenges ahead
The orbiter will remain in the Earth’s orbit till December 1, when it starts its 300-day voyage to Mars. After traversing 400 million km, it is expected to reach the red planet’s orbit on September 24, 2014.
Radhakrishnan had earlier said in an interview that the first major challenge would be on December 1, at 12:42 am, when the orbiter is given the trans-Mars injection as it moves away from the Earth’s sphere of influence and enters the heliocentric orbit, also called the trans-Martian orbit. That the Mars orbiter has to go a distance of 200 million km to 400 million km is itself a big challenge.
When the spacecraft reached Mars in September 2014, the orbiter would have to be slowed, or it would disappear in space, he had said.
Also, this will be Isro’s first spacecraft to exit the sphere of the Earth’s influence, to the tune of around 925,000 km, and enter a heliocentric cruise phase, where the gravitational tugs of the Sun and other planets will dominate. According to reports, only about a third of the 50-odd spacecraft sent by other countries to Mars have been able to complete the journey successfully.
The Rs 450-crore budget of the Indian mission is the lowest in the history of the world’s Mars missions. Initiated in 2010, it involved Rs 110 crore for building of the PSLVC25, which launched the Rs 150-crore spacecraft on Tuesday; the rest was spent on augmenting ground facilities, including those for deep-space communication.
Isro officials said Mars had drawn more space missions than the rest of the planets in the solar system. Locking horns with this red dot of the sky is excruciatingly challenging in terms of the technological mettle required in the domains of navigation, propulsion system design, deep space communication systems, ground segment and thermal and radiation management.
The Space Research Organisation has also put in due thought in creation of the MOM logo, a blend of the Mars’ red shade and the Earth’s blue. The logo depicts the transition of Isro’s MOM from the Earth to Mars and its intended orbit around Mars. The astronomical symbol of Mars has been embedded into the logo. Also, the striking similarity of shades in this logo and Isro’s logo is hard to miss.
IN SPOTLIGHT
The mission at a glance
Budget: Rs 450 crore
The lowest in the world’s Mars mission history
- Rs 110 cr: For building of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLVs) C25
- Rs 150 cr: For the spacecraft launched on Tuesday
- Rs 190 cr: For augmenting ground facilities, including those for deep-space communication
- Checking whether Mars ever had an environment in which life evolved
- Exploring Mars’ surface, topography, minerology and atmosphere
DESTINATION MARS: A timeline
Aug 2010
Isro forms a team headed by V Adimurthy to study feasibility of the mission and gets go-ahead for the project
Aug 2012
In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announces the Mars mission
Aug 2013
The assembling of PSLV begins at Sriharikota for the original scheduled launch on October 28
Oct 22, 2013
Isro announces postponing the launch to November 5 due to bad weather in the Pacific Ocean
Nov 5, 2013
The Mars orbiter mission takes off from Sriharikota
