Indian Martian exploration program

[cobra commando]

 

[Free Karma]

GSLV is very unstable, it hasnt been proven yet, thats why, instead of taking the risk of having the whole thing blow up on the ground, they decided to modify the pslv and go through orbit raising operations.

In any case, Madhav Nair, has been extremely angry with the whole project for some reason. He's been giving strange interviews like "we have lost the race with China", this mission is a waste and what not. It just seems he is a little hurt..not sure.

 

[cobra commando]

 

[nirranj]

Re: Chinese Newspaper on ISRO Mars mission

I would like to nominate this for Most Off-topic Post of 2013.

Off topic... Yes,

Not Accurate to the Thread.

But Precisely inline to the Butt Hurt Brit Bashing posts.

 

[praneetbajpaie]

Re: Chinese Newspaper on ISRO Mars mission

Has anyone read what nimo Chinaman replied to my comment before it was deleted?

 

[happy]

More tidbits are emerging slowly about the different technical aspects of this mission. At each additional piece of info cant stop congratulating these guys

ISRO Mars mission: Our baby is in space looking for objects, scientists enthuse - India - DNA

It was moment of triumph for scientists closely involved in the Mars Orbiter Mission. For KS Shivkumar, director of the Isro Satellite Centre where the spacecraft was built, the placing of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft into the orbit around the Earth was like his baby taking its first steps.

"Our baby is up in space looking for scientific objects but we have a long way to go," he said.

He said that the spacecraft was realised in a record 15 months. The project team has undertaken all contingency measures to ensure that the spacecraft can take decisions on its own in the event of any issue. He said full scale autonomy has been built into the spacecraft which would take decisions on its own and put it on safe mode without a ground intervention. Developing such a system is a real challenge, he added.

According to AS Kiran Kumar, director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, the real challenge lies ahead. "We will have to raise the orbit from 23,000 km to 40,000 km and then to 2 lakh km. Then in the early hours of December 1, the crucial trans-Mars injection would be carried out to enable the spacecraft to undertake its 300 day journey to the red planet," he said.

I think this part about the final apogee before entering trans-martian orbit is new.

 

[happy]

Re: Chinese Newspaper on ISRO Mars mission

Has anyone read what nimo Chinaman replied to my comment before it was deleted?

No. What was it ?? IMO it must be an inane rant.

 

[praneetbajpaie]

Re: Chinese Newspaper on ISRO Mars mission

No. What was it ?? IMO it must be an inane rant.

Don't know. It was deleted before I read it. lol

 

[AVERAGE INDIAN]

 

[chase]

Whenever people say that it's better to spend money on poor people then such endeavors then i want to ask them a question:

What is poverty? Is removing poverty a self justifying goal or a way to open doors of human consciousness to higher goals?
Isn't poverty a lack of mental and brain stimulant which pushes humans towards higher levels of existence? Having 2 meals a day is a narrow definition of poverty. A person who has enough food to feed him 2 times can still be a poor person. If he can't understand the powers of higher faculties of life like arts,science or the bliss experienced by pushing the frontiers of our understanding, he is a poor person.

Does India want to be that nation where the only thing it achieved is to feed its population? Doesn't feeding poor people is only a way to provide them with sufficient energy so that they can think about arts,sciences or what lies beyond the frontiers of our territory?

If you think like that then this MARS mission is just another step in removing poverty.

 

[Shirman]

 

[nrupatunga]

How India Launched Its Mars Mission At Cut-Rate Costs

Kopillil Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO, explained how the agency made Mangalyaan the world's least-expensive Mars endeavour:

1. "I don't like the phrase 'frugal engineering'. ISRO's general philosophy is cost effectiveness. The Russians look for robustness and the Americans go after optimization. Our aim at ISRO was how do we get the Mars mission done on a budget."

2. "We adopted a modular approach. Take the launch vehicle, for instance. We acquired the technology for the Vikas engine in the 1970s by working with the French. There was no money transaction. We have since produced 120 such engines with Indian materials and fully fabricated here. For every successive launch, we have taken the base of our previous, proven launch technology, modified and built on it. Here, we had to add the cryo to the previous module as we needed higher power. We used the same modular tactic with our payload. Our approach gave us cost and schedule advantages."

3. "When we conducted ground tests – which are time consuming and expensive – we kept the number of tests small but wrung out the best out of each. This is our way, historically."

4. "For transferring Mangalyaan from the earth's orbit to Mars' orbit, we used a couple of strategies to bring down fuel consumption drastically."

5. "We are schedule-driven to the extreme. That prevents cost over-runs. This mission has taken 15 months from the time our Prime minister announced it in August last year it to the liftoff. In parts of Europe, even space scientists have 35-hour work weeks. Here, 18-hour days are common. During the launch period, many of our scientists were working for 20 hour-days. Being time effective makes us cost effective."

The Mars craft will take nearly a month to build up the velocity to break free from the earth's orbit and begin its long journey to Mars.

 

[happy]

One more beautiful article by TIFR Scientist Dr.Mayank Vahia. Kudos ISRO !!!

Isro's ambitious Mars Mission: What's in it for our country?

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota

There is a pleasure in doing something difficult but the real challenge is doing the impossible.

K Radhakrishnan, Chairman ISRO (Indian Science Research Organisation) has achieved this and more. He did not just one, but several impossible things in a stroke, at a time when his predecessor was extremely busy bad mouthing him. We all can only salute him and his team.

Why am I using so many superlatives and why have I singled out ISRO Chairman by name? Let me list out how many impossible things he achieved.

Make a small, 1350 kg class satellite to go 25 crore kilometre and study another planet in the Solar System.

Use one of the smallest commercial rockets in the world to launch it in such a way that the Earth is used as a slingshot to power the satellite on its way to Mars.

Do this within a budget of 450 crore rupees.

Design a mission with just 15 kg of scientific instruments, 470 kg of other instruments that can do good science.

Achieve it in a span of 15 months.

Anyone who knows space engineering will tell you that to achieve each of these individually is next to impossible, let alone doing them together. For that alone he and his team deserve full credit.

So why did ISRO attempt this? Well, like people, countries do not live on bread and water alone.
The worth of a nation is defined by the dreams it dares to dream. ISRO dreamt a dream and made it real.

Until a decade ago, ISRO was bogged down by routine engineering activities, in the area of remote sensing and communications. But a policy decision to outsource this work, to private sector Indian companies freed up scientists and engineers in ISRO to dream new dreams.

Chandrayaan and now Mangalayan are the result of this far reaching policy change. You cannot get the best space engineers in the world to set up some of the finest facilities for space technology and then ask them to do mundane things like make remote sensing satellites all the time. Some half a dozen other countries can do that. May be the other 130+ countries can't do it, but just doing that all the time is a waste of talent and boring for those involved. Radhakrishnan had to give them a challenge. It is a credit to his engineers that they rose to the challenge.

Designing a mission to Mars is no joke. Several missions to Mars have been lost to errors. Just working out its path and how to get there is Rocket Science! A small error in its velocity or its angle of release from earth can take the mission several thousands of kilometres from its trajectory by the time it covers the 25 crore kilometres to Mars over next 300 days (it took Chandrayan 4 days to reach Moon). And, because PSLV is a small rocket, they used the Earth's gravity in a cunning manner as a slingshot to achieve this trajectory in most cost effective manner.

It will take 25 days more (till the early hours of December 1) for this slingshot to pick up enough energy to send the spacecraft away from Earth and on its way to Mars. The spacecraft will then have to look after itself as it hurtles towards Mars. The interplanetary medium is harsh and the distance to Earth will be large. Signals from Chandrayan to Earth took about 1 second. From Mars they will take more than 350 seconds. So the spacecraft cannot wait for its parents at home to decide what it should do in case of an emergency.

Once it reaches Mars, it will have to do something meaningful. So what are ISRO's strengths? First, designing complex trajectories that spacecrafts must follow. It has achieved this. Next, ISRO has unmatched capability of remote sensing and designing specialised instruments to look for specific features. So ISRO is using these capabilities to study Methane, Hydrogen, map Mars and get a mineralogical map of Mars. One more payload will look at the way the atmosphere of Mars reacts to Solar radiation.

So why these choices?

First, the Methane sensor. Methane gas is highly reactive. So any methane in the atmosphere will react with other chemicals and will no longer remain methane. Yet, one can imagine life forms that can breathe methane. Some earlier spacecrafts had suggested that there is free methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This can only happen if there is at least some chemically (if not biologically or living) active region on Mars. Recent Mars rover did not find any Methane at the place where it landed but that does not mean it does not exist elsewhere. It is worth a shot.

Hydrogen and deuterium or heavy hydrogen. Hydrogen forms water. But water that is made with heavy hydrogen is heavier and hence it evaporates differently compared to normal water and neither of these forms of hydrogen can exist in a free state on Mars. Hence knowing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio will give a good idea on how the water and other hydroxyl molecules behave in the Mars atmosphere and whether there is fractionation of hydrogen and deuterium on Mars compared to what it must have been when Mars was born.

Next is the map of Mars. ISRO has built up admirable capability in making 2 and 3 dimensional maps of any remote object and they will now use it on Mars. Mineralogy map depends on the fact that different minerals shine differently and when gently heated by the Sun also shine in a signature way. ISRO will use these signatures to determine which mineral is located where on Mars.

The last payload will look at neutral gases being ejected from Mars surface. Again this is an excellent study since we do not really understand how solar radiation interacts with atmosphere, especially since, unlike Earth, Mars has no protective magnetic field. This will be crucial to understanding Mars. So one Mangalyaan reaches Mars, there will be lots and lots of data about Mars.

Yet, there are critics. Some say we should focus on our hungry people, some say we should focus on Moon, some say we should focus on heavier rockets and should have sent a mission only when we had bigger rockets a few years from now and some even say that we should have spent money on competing with China in putting man in space. I think all these reasons are specious.

Firstly, no country lives by food alone. It needs dreams and the worth of a nation is in its capacity to dream and fulfil these dreams. ISRO also did not stop everything else like developing bigger rockets for Mars mission – in fact ISRO has announced that they will test the bigger rocket as early as December this year. As regards feeding the poor with this money, remember that the money spent is miniscule and the problems with feeding the hungry has more to do with logistics and problems of delivery than on funding. Lastly, the idea that we should get into competition with China is just too silly to deserve a response. We live our dreams, let them live theirs. We build on our strengths. As for sending a bigger mission, it is a good idea that the first missions are modest. First learn to walk, then talk of running.

The last issue is, what is in it for common man? We all know that ISRO's 20 years of labour in remote sensing and modelling the Earth saved thousands of lives in Odisha cyclone not even a couple of months ago. Technological developments may not put money directly into poor people's pockets, but it certainly provides them with means of making money. It does not fish for the fishermen but tells them how and where to catch more fish safely. That is worth the trouble.

So as a scientist, I am excited about this new demonstration of technology by ISRO, as an Indian I am proud that on our behalf ISRO has dreamed an impossible dream and made it possible and as a tax payer I am happy that it has done so with so little money. Yes, I am a proud and happy man today.

Isro's ambitious Mars Mission: What's in it for our country? - Bangalore - DNA

 

[pmaitra]

GSLV is very unstable, it hasnt been proven yet, thats why, instead of taking the risk of having the whole thing blow up on the ground, they decided to modify the pslv and go through orbit raising operations.

In any case, Madhav Nair, has been extremely angry with the whole project for some reason. He's been giving strange interviews like "we have lost the race with China", this mission is a waste and what not. It just seems he is a little hurt..not sure.

He is retired. Having worked as a chairman of ISRO for so long, he had his own vision. Now that he is retired, I think the new leadership has taken a more ambitious approach, than his conservative approach.

Perhaps Mr. Nair believes that India should focus on space programmes that directly benefit the people, such as telecom, and weather-forecasting, or focusing on perfecting the GSLV, which he could not during his stint in ISRO, instead of going the more ambitious way, such as mission to Mars, or potentially, a manned space-flight.

He does have a point, and I think his criticism should not be brushed away. One needs to remember that, under his conservative guidance, ISRO has made slow and steady progress.

 

[Free Karma]

The second orbit raising manueour of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 02:18:51 hrs(IST) on Nov 08, 2013, with a burn time of 570.6 seconds has been successfully completed.The observed change in Apogee is from 28814 km to 40186 km.

Yaaay! 4 more to go before little mangalyaan leaves earth orbit!

ISRO: Mars Orbiter Mission

 

[kseeker]

Isro's ambitious Mars Mission: What's in it for our country? | DNA

Thursday, Nov 7, 2013, 12:37 IST | Agency: DNA, Dr.Mayank Vahia

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota - Reuters

There is a pleasure in doing something difficult but the real challenge is doing the impossible.

K Radhakrishnan, Chairman ISRO (Indian Science Research Organisation) has achieved this and more. He did not just one, but several impossible things in a stroke, at a time when his predecessor was extremely busy bad mouthing him. We all can only salute him and his team.

Why am I using so many superlatives and why have I singled out ISRO Chairman by name? Let me list out how many impossible things he achieved.

Make a small, 1350 kg class satellite to go 25 crore kilometre and study another planet in the Solar System.

Use one of the smallest commercial rockets in the world to launch it in such a way that the Earth is used as a slingshot to power the satellite on its way to Mars.

Do this within a budget of 450 crore rupees.

Design a mission with just 15 kg of scientific instruments, 470 kg of other instruments that can do good science.

Achieve it in a span of 15 months.

Anyone who knows space engineering will tell you that to achieve each of these individually is next to impossible, let alone doing them together. For that alone he and his team deserve full credit.

So why did ISRO attempt this? Well, like people, countries do not live on bread and water alone.
The worth of a nation is defined by the dreams it dares to dream. ISRO dreamt a dream and made it real.

Until a decade ago, ISRO was bogged down by routine engineering activities, in the area of remote sensing and communications. But a policy decision to outsource this work, to private sector Indian companies freed up scientists and engineers in ISRO to dream new dreams.

Chandrayaan and now Mangalayan are the result of this far reaching policy change. You cannot get the best space engineers in the world to set up some of the finest facilities for space technology and then ask them to do mundane things like make remote sensing satellites all the time. Some half a dozen other countries can do that. May be the other 130+ countries can't do it, but just doing that all the time is a waste of talent and boring for those involved. Radhakrishnan had to give them a challenge. It is a credit to his engineers that they rose to the challenge.

Designing a mission to Mars is no joke. Several missions to Mars have been lost to errors. Just working out its path and how to get there is Rocket Science! A small error in its velocity or its angle of release from earth can take the mission several thousands of kilometres from its trajectory by the time it covers the 25 crore kilometres to Mars over next 300 days (it took Chandrayan 4 days to reach Moon). And, because PSLV is a small rocket, they used the Earth's gravity in a cunning manner as a slingshot to achieve this trajectory in most cost effective manner.

It will take 25 days more (till the early hours of December 1) for this slingshot to pick up enough energy to send the spacecraft away from Earth and on its way to Mars. The spacecraft will then have to look after itself as it hurtles towards Mars. The interplanetary medium is harsh and the distance to Earth will be large. Signals from Chandrayan to Earth took about 1 second. From Mars they will take more than 350 seconds. So the spacecraft cannot wait for its parents at home to decide what it should do in case of an emergency.

Once it reaches Mars, it will have to do something meaningful. So what are ISRO's strengths? First, designing complex trajectories that spacecrafts must follow. It has achieved this. Next, ISRO has unmatched capability of remote sensing and designing specialised instruments to look for specific features. So ISRO is using these capabilities to study Methane, Hydrogen, map Mars and get a mineralogical map of Mars. One more payload will look at the way the atmosphere of Mars reacts to Solar radiation.

So why these choices?
First, the Methane sensor. Methane gas is highly reactive. So any methane in the atmosphere will react with other chemicals and will no longer remain methane. Yet, one can imagine life forms that can breathe methane. Some earlier spacecrafts had suggested that there is free methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This can only happen if there is at least some chemically (if not biologically or living) active region on Mars. Recent Mars rover did not find any Methane at the place where it landed but that does not mean it does not exist elsewhere. It is worth a shot.

Hydrogen and deuterium or heavy hydrogen. Hydrogen forms water. But water that is made with heavy hydrogen is heavier and hence it evaporates differently compared to normal water and neither of these forms of hydrogen can exist in a free state on Mars. Hence knowing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio will give a good idea on how the water and other hydroxyl molecules behave in the Mars atmosphere and whether there is fractionation of hydrogen and deuterium on Mars compared to what it must have been when Mars was born

Next is the map of Mars. ISRO has built up admirable capability in making 2 and 3 dimensional maps of any remote object and they will now use it on Mars. Mineralogy map depends on the fact that different minerals shine differently and when gently heated by the Sun also shine in a signature way. ISRO will use these signatures to determine which mineral is located where on Mars.

The last payload will look at neutral gases being ejected from Mars surface. Again this is an excellent study since we do not really understand how solar radiation interacts with atmosphere, especially since, unlike Earth, Mars has no protective magnetic field. This will be crucial to understanding Mars. So one Mangalyaan reaches Mars, there will be lots and lots of data about Mars.

Yet, there are critics. Some say we should focus on our hungry people, some say we should focus on Moon, some say we should focus on heavier rockets and should have sent a mission only when we had bigger rockets a few years from now and some even say that we should have spent money on competing with China in putting man in space. I think all these reasons are specious.

Firstly, no country lives by food alone. It needs dreams and the worth of a nation is in its capacity to dream and fulfil these dreams. ISRO also did not stop everything else like developing bigger rockets for Mars mission – in fact ISRO has announced that they will test the bigger rocket as early as December this year. As regards feeding the poor with this money, remember that the money spent is miniscule and the problems with feeding the hungry has more to do with logistics and problems of delivery than on funding. Lastly, the idea that we should get into competition with China is just too silly to deserve a response. We live our dreams, let them live theirs. We build on our strengths. As for sending a bigger mission, it is a good idea that the first missions are modest. First learn to walk, then talk of running.

The last issue is, what is in it for common man? We all know that ISRO's 20 years of labour in remote sensing and modelling the Earth saved thousands of lives in Odisha cyclone not even a couple of months ago. Technological developments may not put money directly into poor people's pockets, but it certainly provides them with means of making money. It does not fish for the fishermen but tells them how and where to catch more fish safely. That is worth the trouble.

So as a scientist, I am excited about this new demonstration of technology by ISRO, as an Indian I am proud that on our behalf ISRO has dreamed an impossible dream and made it possible and as a tax payer I am happy that it has done so with so little money. Yes, I am a proud and happy man today.

Dr Mayank Vahia is a scientist working at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research since 1979. His main fields of interest are high-energy astrophysics, mainly Cosmic Rays, X-rays and Gamma Rays. He is currently looking at the area of archeo-astronomy and learning about the way the our ancestors saw the stars, and thereby developed intellectually. He has, in particular, been working on the Indus Valley Civilisation and taking a deeper look at their script.

 

[happy]

Isro's ambitious Mars Mission: What's in it for our country? | DNA

Thursday, Nov 7, 2013, 12:37 IST | Agency: DNA, Dr.Mayank Vahia

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota - Reuters

There is a pleasure in doing something difficult but the real challenge is doing the impossible.

K Radhakrishnan, Chairman ISRO (Indian Science Research Organisation) has achieved this and more. He did not just one, but several impossible things in a stroke, at a time when his predecessor was extremely busy bad mouthing him. We all can only salute him and his team.

Why am I using so many superlatives and why have I singled out ISRO Chairman by name? Let me list out how many impossible things he achieved.

Make a small, 1350 kg class satellite to go 25 crore kilometre and study another planet in the Solar System.

Use one of the smallest commercial rockets in the world to launch it in such a way that the Earth is used as a slingshot to power the satellite on its way to Mars.

Do this within a budget of 450 crore rupees.

Design a mission with just 15 kg of scientific instruments, 470 kg of other instruments that can do good science.

Achieve it in a span of 15 months.

Anyone who knows space engineering will tell you that to achieve each of these individually is next to impossible, let alone doing them together. For that alone he and his team deserve full credit.

So why did ISRO attempt this? Well, like people, countries do not live on bread and water alone.
The worth of a nation is defined by the dreams it dares to dream. ISRO dreamt a dream and made it real.

Until a decade ago, ISRO was bogged down by routine engineering activities, in the area of remote sensing and communications. But a policy decision to outsource this work, to private sector Indian companies freed up scientists and engineers in ISRO to dream new dreams.

Chandrayaan and now Mangalayan are the result of this far reaching policy change. You cannot get the best space engineers in the world to set up some of the finest facilities for space technology and then ask them to do mundane things like make remote sensing satellites all the time. Some half a dozen other countries can do that. May be the other 130+ countries can't do it, but just doing that all the time is a waste of talent and boring for those involved. Radhakrishnan had to give them a challenge. It is a credit to his engineers that they rose to the challenge.

Designing a mission to Mars is no joke. Several missions to Mars have been lost to errors. Just working out its path and how to get there is Rocket Science! A small error in its velocity or its angle of release from earth can take the mission several thousands of kilometres from its trajectory by the time it covers the 25 crore kilometres to Mars over next 300 days (it took Chandrayan 4 days to reach Moon). And, because PSLV is a small rocket, they used the Earth's gravity in a cunning manner as a slingshot to achieve this trajectory in most cost effective manner.

It will take 25 days more (till the early hours of December 1) for this slingshot to pick up enough energy to send the spacecraft away from Earth and on its way to Mars. The spacecraft will then have to look after itself as it hurtles towards Mars. The interplanetary medium is harsh and the distance to Earth will be large. Signals from Chandrayan to Earth took about 1 second. From Mars they will take more than 350 seconds. So the spacecraft cannot wait for its parents at home to decide what it should do in case of an emergency.

Once it reaches Mars, it will have to do something meaningful. So what are ISRO's strengths? First, designing complex trajectories that spacecrafts must follow. It has achieved this. Next, ISRO has unmatched capability of remote sensing and designing specialised instruments to look for specific features. So ISRO is using these capabilities to study Methane, Hydrogen, map Mars and get a mineralogical map of Mars. One more payload will look at the way the atmosphere of Mars reacts to Solar radiation.

So why these choices?
First, the Methane sensor. Methane gas is highly reactive. So any methane in the atmosphere will react with other chemicals and will no longer remain methane. Yet, one can imagine life forms that can breathe methane. Some earlier spacecrafts had suggested that there is free methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This can only happen if there is at least some chemically (if not biologically or living) active region on Mars. Recent Mars rover did not find any Methane at the place where it landed but that does not mean it does not exist elsewhere. It is worth a shot.

Hydrogen and deuterium or heavy hydrogen. Hydrogen forms water. But water that is made with heavy hydrogen is heavier and hence it evaporates differently compared to normal water and neither of these forms of hydrogen can exist in a free state on Mars. Hence knowing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio will give a good idea on how the water and other hydroxyl molecules behave in the Mars atmosphere and whether there is fractionation of hydrogen and deuterium on Mars compared to what it must have been when Mars was born

Next is the map of Mars. ISRO has built up admirable capability in making 2 and 3 dimensional maps of any remote object and they will now use it on Mars. Mineralogy map depends on the fact that different minerals shine differently and when gently heated by the Sun also shine in a signature way. ISRO will use these signatures to determine which mineral is located where on Mars.

The last payload will look at neutral gases being ejected from Mars surface. Again this is an excellent study since we do not really understand how solar radiation interacts with atmosphere, especially since, unlike Earth, Mars has no protective magnetic field. This will be crucial to understanding Mars. So one Mangalyaan reaches Mars, there will be lots and lots of data about Mars.

Yet, there are critics. Some say we should focus on our hungry people, some say we should focus on Moon, some say we should focus on heavier rockets and should have sent a mission only when we had bigger rockets a few years from now and some even say that we should have spent money on competing with China in putting man in space. I think all these reasons are specious.

Firstly, no country lives by food alone. It needs dreams and the worth of a nation is in its capacity to dream and fulfil these dreams. ISRO also did not stop everything else like developing bigger rockets for Mars mission – in fact ISRO has announced that they will test the bigger rocket as early as December this year. As regards feeding the poor with this money, remember that the money spent is miniscule and the problems with feeding the hungry has more to do with logistics and problems of delivery than on funding. Lastly, the idea that we should get into competition with China is just too silly to deserve a response. We live our dreams, let them live theirs. We build on our strengths. As for sending a bigger mission, it is a good idea that the first missions are modest. First learn to walk, then talk of running.

The last issue is, what is in it for common man? We all know that ISRO's 20 years of labour in remote sensing and modelling the Earth saved thousands of lives in Odisha cyclone not even a couple of months ago. Technological developments may not put money directly into poor people's pockets, but it certainly provides them with means of making money. It does not fish for the fishermen but tells them how and where to catch more fish safely. That is worth the trouble.

So as a scientist, I am excited about this new demonstration of technology by ISRO, as an Indian I am proud that on our behalf ISRO has dreamed an impossible dream and made it possible and as a tax payer I am happy that it has done so with so little money. Yes, I am a proud and happy man today.

Dr Mayank Vahia is a scientist working at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research since 1979. His main fields of interest are high-energy astrophysics, mainly Cosmic Rays, X-rays and Gamma Rays. He is currently looking at the area of archeo-astronomy and learning about the way the our ancestors saw the stars, and thereby developed intellectually. He has, in particular, been working on the Indus Valley Civilisation and taking a deeper look at their script.

Bhai, I just posted this above

 

[kseeker]

Bhai, I just posted this above

Ooops ! my mistake

 

[happy]

Mars orbiter raised further, mission on track :cool2:

Isro's Mars spacecraft successfully completed its second 'orbit-raising maneuver' today, three days after it successfully lifted clear of the Sriharikota spaceport.

The first 'orbit-raising maneuver', which involved the firing of a thruster, was earlier performed on Thursday as part of a series of five such scheduled operations.

The maneuvers are designed to propel the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) towards the Red Planet, Isro scientists said. As the spacecraft lacks the power to fly directly to Mars, the probe will orbit the Earth for nearly a month and the thruster firings are designed to build up the escape velocity to break free from the Earth's gravitational pull.

Mars orbiter raised further, mission on track - Hindustan Times

 

[Free Karma]

Third Orbital burn is complete!

The third orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 02:10:43 hrs(IST) on Nov 09, 2013, with a burn time of 707 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in Apogee is from 40186km to 71636km

Woot! 3 Done, 3 more to go! It seems this was also the largest of the jumps

MOM's Midnight Manoeuvers !
Tonight we have scheduled the largest leap by ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission Spacecraft so far. After raising its apogee to 30 thousand km and 40 thousand km respectively in the last two Midnight Manoeuvers, MOM is all set to gallop to an apogee of 70 thousand km in tonight's firing of its Liquid engine scheduled at 02:10 Hrs IST.