Indian Martian exploration program

[mikhail]

Mars Orbiter spent 55% of the total fuel so far: ISRO

Mars orbiter has so far burnt about 55 per cent of the 850 kilograms of fuel it is carrying.


Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO's) Mars Orbiter, which is currently at a distance of 60 lakh kilometers from Earth, has so far burnt about 55 per cent of the 850 kilograms of fuel it is carrying.

"We have already spent 470 kilogram of the bio-propellant we are carrying. However, we have not overspent,despite the glitch that we encountered during the fourth burn (while circling the earth. We are well within the nominal limit of spending," said AS Kiran Kumar, a senior scientist working on the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and the director of city-based Space Application Centre (SAC), an arm of ISRO.

Instead of the scheduled five burns, the orbiter had to conduct six earth burns before the Trans-Mars Injection phase.

"This is a mission where we are using the most minimal of energy possible. The next round of fuel will be burnt in the Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TCM) that will be undertaken in the months of April and August 2014. About 200 kg of fuel will be burnt in a matter of 28 minutes on September 24, 2014, during the Mars Orbit Injection phase," said Kiran Kumar while talking about the mission on the sidelines of a talk on ISRO's Mars Mission organised at Ahmedabad Management Association on Wednesday evening.

The first TCM was carried out on December 11.

The senior ISRO scientist said that indigenously developed Ceramic Servo Accelerometer (CSA) that measures the precise amount of velocity the satellite gains when the thrusters are burnt have "enabled in preserving the fuel on-board." This CSA on the MOM is an improved version of the one deployed during the Chandrayaan Mission.

"About 190 kgs of fuel was spent on Tran-Mars Injection phase on December 1 which was perhaps the toughest part of the mission so far," said Kiran Kumar while addressing an audience at AMA.

The Mars orbiter which was launched on November 5 is at a distance of 60 lakh kilometers from Earth and is currently travelling at a speed of 3.4 kilometer per second through space. By the time the orbiter reaches Mars, it will attain a velocity of 34 kilometer per second.

"We are currently communicating with the satellite using the on-board medium gain antenna. Any message sent to it currently takes 12 seconds to reach. This gap will keep on increasing till the furthest point when a signal sent from Earth will take 20 minutes to travel one-way," said Kiran Kumar.

The Mars Orbiter is scheduled to scan the atmosphere of Mars for a period of six months and any shortage in fuel could shorten or jeopardise this mission.
Mars Orbiter spent 55% of the total fuel so far: ISRO scientist - Indian Express

 

[CrYsIs]

VSSC Chief Hints at Second Mars Mission Using GSLV

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) may go in for a more sophisticated sequel to the Mars mission by 2016 if the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is ready and proven by then, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) director S Ramakrishnan said.

"The project is not yet approved. But we are planning a second mission to Mars with a more powerful launch vehicle in two years. The GSLV will be ready by then and also the GSLV Mk-III version," he said. The second mission, unlike the first, will have a lander. The final clearance to the mega project will depend on the feedback received from the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) which is on its way to the Red Planet at present, he said. ISRO had to be satisfied with a modest payload on MOM as it had to depend on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for the mission's launch. A prototype of the crew capsule that will be used for ISRO's future manned space flight will be tested aboard the GSLV Mk-III, the heftiest rocket to be built in the country, before April 2014, he said.

'GSLV' Set for Jan 5 Launch

T'Puram: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now planning for a January 5, 2014, launch for the delayed GSLV-D5 mission fitted with the Made-in-India cryogenic stage, ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan said here on Friday.

VSSC Chief Hints at Second Mars Mission Using GSLV - The New Indian Express

 

[Free Karma]

VSSC Chief Hints at Second Mars Mission Using GSLV

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) may go in for a more sophisticated sequel to the Mars mission by 2016 if the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is ready and proven by then, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) director S Ramakrishnan said.

"The project is not yet approved. But we are planning a second mission to Mars with a more powerful launch vehicle in two years. The GSLV will be ready by then and also the GSLV Mk-III version," he said. The second mission, unlike the first, will have a lander. The final clearance to the mega project will depend on the feedback received from the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) which is on its way to the Red Planet at present, he said. ISRO had to be satisfied with a modest payload on MOM as it had to depend on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for the mission's launch. A prototype of the crew capsule that will be used for ISRO's future manned space flight will be tested aboard the GSLV Mk-III, the heftiest rocket to be built in the country, before April 2014, he said.

'GSLV' Set for Jan 5 Launch

T'Puram: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now planning for a January 5, 2014, launch for the delayed GSLV-D5 mission fitted with the Made-in-India cryogenic stage, ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan said here on Friday.

VSSC Chief Hints at Second Mars Mission Using GSLV - The New Indian Express

o.0 o.0 whoooa! They really do love mars!!! Wonder if they are still looking at doing the venus and sun missions that were announced, or is this a complete change of itenary!

 

[pmaitra]

Re: India all set to give go ahead for Mars mission

Isro uses new method to locate Mars Orbiter Mission

The statement said that is why a new method was used on Tuesday. This involves receiving MOM's radio signals at two widely separated ground stations at different instances. The system is called "Delta differential one way ranging". The results were very satisfactory, Isro said.

 

[Illusive]

What Questions Will ISRO's Mission Answer?

From the feasibility study of June 2011, which said that Isro's most tested launch vehicle, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), could be used for a mission to Mars, to the early hours of December 1, when the spacecraft was injected into its Mars transfer orbit, it's been an exciting journey.

If the mission could be broken into three steps, then I'd say we've passed the first two—getting it into earth orbit, then the injection into a planned orbit around the Sun—and are now ready for the third, on September 24, 2014: Reducing the orbiter's velocity significantly for its entry into the Mars orbit.

With the remote sensing and geostationary missions which Isro has been performing for the past two decades, if you missed an operation you could do it in the next orbit. The Mars mission, however, is unique: Miss one operation and the spacecraft could drift off anywhere.

We have tried many new things in this mission. We use a liquid fuel engine. After the initial use of the engine—enhancing the apogee, the farthest point in the satellite's orbit from the centre of the earth—it hibernates for nearly 300 days and is then reactivated; the fluid and pressurisations system have to survive 300 days in outer space.

Then, this mission poses a new challenge: Communication delay. Chandrayaan travelled a distance of 400,000 km; Mangalyaan will travel 1700 times that, all of 680 million km. As it gets further from earth, the one-way communication delay grows to 20 minutes. We've built autonomy into the spacecraft; it is able to do operations during that lag. This is the first time we've built a spacecraft with autonomy and if it works well, we could use in it our regular satellites, converting them into 'smart' satellites. That could mean a future remote-sensing satellite that could look for hot spots and steer itself to take more observations of any object of interest.

We plan for every possible contingency and build in redundancies. In other missions, these systems and components were activated by ground commands. Mangalyaan's new fault detection and reconfiguration systems can do it on their own.
If problems come up in a near-earth spacecraft, we send it into 'safe' mode from our ground stations. But Mangalyaan can get into safe mode by itself, turning its antennae towards the earth, to receive commands, and its solar panels towards the sun, for energy.

A series of commands are stored in the craft's tele-command processor which activate its five instruments or payloads. But in case we require a new sequence of operations, there's scope for that as well. During the orbit-raising period, we have tested all these technologies and systems. So far the mission is going as per our plan. The issue is not the fuel or the three planned trajectory-correction manoeuvres—in April, August, September 2014—but the health of the satellite and of the electronics onboard. Anything can happen anytime.
We've taken instruments that were made in India; no instrument was left behind for want of space. Can these instruments be tweaked to get more or varied information, as ongoing missions, like Nasa's Curiosity Rover, can? No, the capabilities are fixed. But what can certainly be tweaked is where they make observations and how many more of those they make.

That doesn't mean we have compromised anything on scientific measurements. A Mars mission opportunity comes only every 26 months. We chose 2013 as we did not want to wait for 2016 or 2018. With our learning from this, we can always send a larger mission next time.

This has been a good year for us and we are already seeing the benefits, including in India's private sector participation. For the first time, the Shipping Corporation of India participated, almost in mission mode. This will boost the morale of industry, which will see value addition by participating in India's space programmes. The commercial market has shown confidence in PSLV, which can do versatile launches. We have a French and a German satellite launch commissioned on PSLV and three UK satellites of 350-kg each will be launched using this rocket.

After the successful completion of the mission in September 2014, the deep space network at Bylalu, near Bangalore, which has been enhanced for this mission, will also find its place in the global deep space network facilities (where Nasa dominates today with three networks in Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid).

We did not take this mission to win any global race—though it's true that with the spacecraft leaving earth orbit, the world now believes that there can be a low-cost way of doing things—we wanted to compete with ourselves.

I think such missions also inspire the younger generation. In 2006, Isro received 24,000 applications for 268 positions. In 2009, post Chandrayaan-1, we received 140,000 applications for 371 seats. In 2012, we received 120,000 applications for just 22 posts!

 

[Shadow]

How well are our ISRO scientists paid compared to international standards?

 

[CrYsIs]

How well are our ISRO scientists paid compared to international standards?

peanuts.....

 

[Soul83]

india is one of the few countries with a space programme, congrats

 

[CrYsIs]

india is one of the few countries with a space programme, congrats

Off topic : isn't your DP that of the Mr sawn the roma guy ?

 

[CrYsIs]

Mars orbiter current location :-



Mars orbiter is currently at 90,28,350 km away from earth

 

[p2prada]

I think such missions also inspire the younger generation. In 2006, Isro received 24,000 applications for 268 positions. In 2009, post Chandrayaan-1, we received 140,000 applications for 371 seats. In 2012, we received 120,000 applications for just 22 posts!

Bollocks. There were no jobs because companies were not hiring, that's all. Had little to do with the space missions.

 

[Soul83]

Off topic : isn't your DP that of the Mr sawn the roma guy ?

yes im that guy

 

[tramp]

Mangalyaan hurtling down the "road" to the Red Planet some 11 million km away.

ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission
23 hours ago
Mission Update: MOM

As on today Mars Orbiter is almost 11.04 Million km away from planet Earth, a signal from ground control station is taking almost 36.8 seconds to reach MoM... Usain Bolt would have run 345 m in that much time...

https://www.facebook.com/isromom

Mars orbiter current location :-



Mars orbiter is currently at 90,28,350 km away from earth

 

[happy]

Late ship postponed Mars mission launch, says official - The Times of India

BANGALORE: Over three months after India successfully launched a probe to Mars, a senior department of space official gave details to why the original launch date (October 28, 2013) was pushed to November 5.

"Two of the four diesel engines of a ship meant to track the movement of the satellite failed and this delayed its arrival at Fiji Island in the South Pacific. We had to put off the launch by a week. The ship finally arrived a day before the launch," V Koteswara Rao, scientific secretary, department of space, said on Thursday.

As the satellite would pass over the South Pacific Ocean which is not covered by any ground station, Indian Space Research Organization hired Shipping Corporation of India ships Yamuna and Nalanda to track the satellite.

"We should appreciate SCI technicians who reached the ship and solved the problem in time," Rao said while delivering the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture at the Central Power Research Institute here.

Pointing out the advantages of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket, he said Isro has in its pipeline a series of launches, mostly on the trusted Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) this year (see box).

Among the major launches are four satellites of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS), forming a constellation of satellites Isro wants to create for a regional navigational system on the lines of GPS. It'll also launch a foreign satellite SPOT-7 as part of its collaboration with France.

In the pipeline

February-March 2014

Satellite/Mission — Launch Vehicle

IRNSS-1B — PSLV

SPOT-7 — PSLV

April 2014-March 2015

Satellite/Mission — Launch Vehicle

Crew Module test — GSLV MK-III

IRNSS-1C — PSLV-C26

IRNSS-1D — PSLV-C27

IRNSS-1E — PSLV-C28

GSAT-6— GSLV-D6

GSAT-16 — Ariane-V

 

[pmaitra]

Hmm, so we are doing a crew module test! Wow! Good luck ISRO.

 

[CrYsIs]

[/URL]

MOM current location -11,748,804 kms from earth

 

[AVERAGE INDIAN]

 

[feathers]

India's Mars mission successfully completes 100 days in space tomorrow | NDTV.com

India's first inter-planetary probe Mars Orbiter Spacecraft will be completing 100 days in
space tomorrow in its voyage towards the red planet.

The health of the spacecraft, launched by the country's workhorse rocket PSLV-C25 on November 5 last from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, was described as "normal" by Indian Space Research Organisation.

ISRO said health parameters of all the payloads are normal and the spacecraft is presently at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one-way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds.

After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24.

Subsequent to six orbit raising manoeuvres around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection (TMI) manoeuvre on December last gave necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric Orbit.

This journey is long wherein the spacecraft has to travel 680 million km out of which a travel of 190 million km is completed so far, ISRO said in a release. Pointing out that the first Trajectory Correction
Manoeuvre (TCM) was conducted on December 11, ISRO said,"The trajectory of the spacecraft, till today, is as expected."

Three more TCM operations are planned around April 2014, August 2014 and September 2014. The spacecraft is continuously monitored by the ground station of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), located at Byalalu, near Bangalore.

"Except for a 40 minute break in the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft to the ground station, data has been continuously available for all the 100 days." Explaining that the propulsion system of the spacecraft is configured for TCMs and the Mars Orbit Insertion Operation, it said on February 6 that all the five payloads on Mars Orbiter spacecraft were switched 'ON' to check their health.

 

[WMD]

From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn't Have to Break the Bank

From India, Proof That a Trip to Mars Doesn't Have to Break the Bank​

The Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Spacecraft mounted atop a rocket at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India. Indian Space Research Organization/European Press photo Agency

BANGALORE, India — While India's recent launch of a spacecraft to Mars was a remarkable feat in its own right, it is the $75 million mission's thrifty approach to time, money and materials that is getting attention.

Just days after the launch of India's Mangalyaan satellite, NASA sent off its own Mars mission, five years in the making, named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of India's Mars mission, by contrast, was just three-quarters of the $100 million that Hollywood spent on last year's space-based hit, "Gravity."

"The mission is a triumph of low-cost Indian engineering," said Roddam Narasimha, an aerospace scientist and a professor at Bangalore's Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research.

"By excelling in getting so much out of so little, we are establishing ourselves as the most cost-effective center globewide for a variety of advanced technologies," said Mr. Narasimha.

India's 3,000-pound Mars satellite carries five instruments that will measure methane gas, a marker of life on the planet. Maven (for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), weighs nearly twice as much but carries eight heavy-duty instruments that will investigate what went wrong in the Martian climate, which could have once supported life.
Launch media viewer

The tracking center in Bangalore, which will track the Mars mission. Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

"Ours is a contrasting, inexpensive and innovative approach to the very complex mission," said K. Radhakrishnan, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, in an interview at the space agency's heavily guarded Bangalore headquarters. "Yet it is a technically well-conceived and designed mission," he said. Wealthier countries may have little incentive to pursue technological advances on the cheap, but not a populous, resource-starved country. So jugaad, or building things creatively and inexpensively, has become a national strength. India built the world's cheapest car ($2,500), the world's cheapest tablet ($49), and even quirkier creations like flour mills powered by scooters.

"If necessity is the mother of invention, constraint is the mother of frugal innovation," said Terri Bresenham, the chief executive of GE Healthcare, South Asia, who is based in Bangalore. GE Healthcare has the largest research and development operations in India and has produced low-cost innovations in infant health, cancer detection and heart disease treatment.

In India, even a priority sector like space research gets a meager 0.34 percent of the country's total annual outlay. Its $1 billion space budget is only 5.5 percent of NASA's budget.

ISRO has learned to make cost-effectiveness a daily mantra. Its inexpensive but reliable launch capabilities have become popular for the launches of small French, German and British satellites. Although the space agency had to build ground systems from scratch, its Chandrayaan moon mission in 2008 cost one-tenth what other nations' moon shots cost, said Mylswamy Annadurai, mission director.

The most obvious way ISRO does it is low-cost engineering talent, the same reason so many software firms use Indian engineers. India's abundant supply of young technical talent helped rein in personnel costs to less than 15 percent of the budget. "Rocket scientists in India cost very little," said Ajey Lele, a researcher at a New Delhi think tank, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, and author of "Mission Mars: India's Quest for the Red Planet."

The average age of India's 2,500-person Mars team is 27. "At 50, I am the oldest member of my team; the next oldest is 32," said Subbiah Arunan, the project's director. Entry-level Indian space engineers make about $1,000 a month, less than a third of what their Western counterparts make.


The Indians also had a short development schedule that contributed heavily to the mission's low cost, said Andrew Coates, planetary scientist at University College London and a leader of the European ExoMars expedition planned for 2018. The engineers had to compress their efforts into 18 months (other countries' space vehicles have taken six years or more to build). It was either launch by November 2013 or wait another 26 months when the geometry of the sun, Mars and Earth would again be perfect for a launch.

"Since the time was so short, for the first time in the history of such a project, we scheduled tasks by the hour — not days, not weeks," said Mr. Arunan. Mr. Radhakrishnan added: "Could we pull it off in less than two years' time? Frankly, I doubted it."

The modest budget did not allow for multiple iterations. So, instead of building many models (a qualification model, a flight model and a flight spare), as is the norm for American and European agencies, scientists built the final flight model right from the start. Expensive ground tests were also limited. "India's 'late beginner' advantage was that it could learn from earlier mission failures," said Mr. Lele.

"It is a question of philosophy, and each country has its own," explained Mr. Radhakrishnan. "The Russians, for example, believe in putting large amounts of time and resources into testing so that the systems are robust."

His agency curbed costs by another technique familiar to businesses in India: transforming old technology into new. The launch vehicle was first developed in the late 1970s and was augmented several times to become the solid propulsion system currently used in its latest Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehiclelauncher.

The G.S.L.V.'s engine also dates back to the early 1970s, when ISRO engineers used technology transferred from France's Ariane program. The same approach, which the Indian scientists call modularity, extended to building spacecraft and communication systems. "We sometimes have to trade off an ideal configuration for cost-effectiveness, but the heritage is being improved constantly," said Mr. Radhakrishnan.

Cost savings also came from using similar systems across a dozen concurrent projects. Many related technologies could be used in the Mars project; Astrosat, an astronomy mission to be launched in late 2014; the second moon mission, which is two years away; and even Aditya, a solar mission four years out.

Systems like the attitude control, which maintains the orientation of the spacecraft; the gyro, a sensor that measures the satellite's deviation from its set path; or the star tracker, a sensor that orients the satellite to distant objects in the celestial sphere, are the same across several ISRO missions.

"The building blocks are kept the same so we don't have to tailor-make for each mission," said Mr. Annadurai of the moon mission. "Also, we have a ready backup if a system fails."

Teams also did the kind of thing engineers working on missions do around the world. They worked through weekends with no overtime pay, putting in more hours to the dollar. Mr. Arunan slept on the couch in his office through the 18 months, rereading his favorite P. G. Wodehouse novels to relieve stress. "This is the Indian way of working," said Mr. Annadurai.

Despite its cost-effectiveness, many have argued that India's extraterrestrial excursions are profligate in a country starved of even basic necessities like clean drinking water and toilets. Millions sleep hungry at night, critics have emphasized. They condemn the Mars mission as nothing more than showing off.

But scientists have argued that early Indian satellites paved the way for today's advanced disaster management systems and modern telecom infrastructure. In the 1970s, cyclones killed tens of thousands of people. Last year, when Cyclone Phailin struck India's east coast, the casualties were in the single digits. In the 1980s, television broadcasts were available in only four Indian cities, but today they are found countrywide.

The Mars mission is also having a multiplier effect on Indian industry. Companies like Larsen & Toubro and Godrej & Boyce, which built vital parts for the satellite, will use this high-tech expertise to compete for global aerospace, military and nuclear contracts worth billions of dollars. Godrej, for example, has begun making engine parts for Boeing.

Scientists have also said that space exploration and the alleviation of poverty need not be mutually exclusive. "If the Mars mission's $75 million was distributed equally to every Indian, they would be able to buy a cup of roadside chai once every three years," said Mr. Narasimha, the aerospace scientist, referring to the tea that many Indians drink.

"My guess is that even the poorest Indians will happily forgo their chai to be able to see their country send a rocket all the way to Mars."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/b...ip-to-mars-doesnt-have-to-break-the-bank.html

 

[Kshatriya87]

Re: India all set to give go ahead for Mars mission

Look at these asswipe nri's who abuse India just to make themselves feel superior and show foreigners that they are different. In the end they aren't integrated either into host or home country.

So we should wait for 20 years to solve our corruption problem (which can never be solved 100% by the way), women washrooms, molestations etc. and keep our genius scientists, students and interns from having the opportunity to achieve information that can help the entire world's future space missions? Where is the sense in that?

Dear Pakis & NRIs, we do it because we can. And just because we are successfully executing a mars mission does not mean that we are not working on other problems of our country. Think before you comment.