Mars Orbiter Mission – ISRO plans supplementary orbit raising manoeuvre for Mars orbiter

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), informally called Mangalyaan (“Mars-craft”) is a Mars orbiter that was successfully launched into Earth orbit on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) India.

The mission is a “technology demonstrator” project aiming to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission.

The Mars Orbiter Mission probe lifted-off from First Launch Pad at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, using a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C-25 at 2:38 PM IST (9:08 UTC) on 5 November 2013.

The Mars Orbiter Mission is India’s first interplanetary mission. If successful, ISRO would become the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after Roscosmos, NASA, and ESA.

The government of India approved the project on 3 August 2012, after the Indian Space Research Organisation completed INR 125 crore (US$19 million) of required studies for the orbiter. The total project cost may be up to INR 454 crore (US$69 million).

Mangalyaan’s on-orbit mission life was between six and ten months. The spacecraft structure and propulsion hardware configurations are similar to Chandrayaan 1, India’s first successful robotic lunar orbiter that operated from 2008 to 2009, with specific improvements and upgrades needed for a Mars specific mission.

On 19 October 2013, ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan announced that the launch had to be postponed by a week due to delay of a crucial telemetry ship reaching Fiji Islands. The launch was rescheduled for 5 November 2013. The 56 hours – plus countdown for the launch on November 5 at 02:36 pm IST began on Sunday, November 3.

The PSLV C25 successfully lifted off at 2:38 PM IST, and placed into Earth orbit at 3:28 PM IST.

A final firing on 30 November 2013 will send MOM onto a trajectory to Mars.

Nov 7, 2013

Indian Space Research Organisation today performed the first orbit raising manoeuvre of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft, which was launched on Tuesday. An ISRO spokesman said, a series of five orbit raising operations are scheduled on the Mars mission starting today. The second and third such operations will be performed tomorrow and on Saturday to raise the mission apogee to 40,000 km and 71,650 km. The fourth and fifth operations will be performed to raise the apogee of one lakh km and 1.92 lakh km on November 11 and 16.

After the successful completion of these operations, the mission is expected to take on the crucial event of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42 AM on December 1.

ISRO’s PSLV C 25 successfully injected the 1,350-kg Mars orbiter ’Mangalyaan’ into Earth’s orbit some 44 minutes after its launch from Sriharikota on Tuesday.

Nov 11,  2013

The Indian Space Research Organisation in a press release on Monday stated that a supplementary orbit raising manoeuvre would be performed for the Mars orbiter. In the fourth orbit-raising operation conducted on Monday morning the spacecraft was raised from 71,623 km to 78,276 km as against the originally planned to 1 lakh km.

ISRO officials told AIR that there was no reason for panic and the spacecraft is safe and under control. The next orbit raising operation would be done tomorrow at 5 hours. During the orbit-raising operations conducted since November 7, 2013, ISRO officials said that testing and exercising functions essential for Trans-Mars Injection and Mars Orbit Insertion were normal.

The Mars orbiter was put on its first elliptical orbit of 23 thousand five hundred Kilometres 44 minutes after it began its journey on the fifth of this month from the Sathish Dhawan Space Centre Sriharikota.


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