India advances a step closer to the Red Planet

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Wednesday unveiled its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, which is scheduled to be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota between October 21 and November 19. The `450 crore MOM, as it has been officially named by Isro, will be the space agency’s first interplanetary mission, and it will be launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL).

Scientists and engineers at the Isro Satellite Centre, where the spacecraft has been built, said the MOM is the most challenging space mission ever undertaken by India so far. Apart from the fact that it will take about nine months for the space craft to reach the Red Planet after leaving the Earth’s orbit (if the satellite leaves the earth orbit in November 2013, it will reach Mars in September 2014), the scientists and engineers will have the arduous task to realise related deep space mission planning and communication management at a distance of nearly 400 million km.

“This mission is totally different from the earlier ones undertaken by Isro, including the Chandrayaan-1. With the earlier satellites, we received the data within few seconds. In case of the Chandrayaan-1, it was within two or three seconds. But here, to have a to and fro communication between the spacecraft and the earth stations, it will take nearly 40 minutes. If something happened to the Orbiter, it would take us 40 minutes to react,” said M Annadurai, programme director, IRS & SSS (Indian Remote Sensing & Small, Science and Student Satellites).

However, KS Shivkumar, director of Isro Satellite Centre, said the project team has undertaken all contingency measures to ensure that the spacecraft can take decisions on its own in case of an unprecedented eventuality. A full scale autonomy has been built into the spacecraft, which would take decisions on its own and put it on safe mode without any ground interventions, he said.

Detecting the presence of methane
Arunan S, project director of MOM, said the satellite with five payloads onboard will carry compact science experiments. The five payloads are Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for MARS (MSM), Martian Exospheric Composition Explorer (MENCA), MARS Colour Camera (MCC and TIR imaging spectrometer (TIS).

MOM seeks to reveal whether there is methane, considered a “precursor chemical” for life, on the Red Planet, key officials behind the ambitious venture said on Wednesday.