Bharat Rakshak

SwamyG wrote:
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/scienc ... 305912.ece

The country’s highly anticipated Mars Orbiter Mission will take off as planned on Tuesday, November 5, at 2.38 p.m.

An ISRO official said the Launch Authorisation Board on Friday cleared the flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

The 56-hour countdown begins on Sunday at 6.08 a.m.

As part of Isro’s scaled up space programme, the country’s first interplanetary probe in a way is a statement to the world on India’s technological capability, skilled workforce, and frugal engineering, and hopes to show that it is a low-cost player in the high-cost exploration business. And there is a space economy in the making.

Just consider this. The Rs 450-crore (Rs 4.5 bn/$74 million) mission is being executed just 15 months after the government approved it in August 2012. The satellite is built by Indian scientists and engineers. It is being launched from Indian soil, using an indigenous rocket and will carry home-grown instruments to read the biochemistry of Mars. The 5 November blast-off is also significant as it marks the silver jubilee of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The spacecraft, once launched aboard the PSLV-c25 (PSLV XL), would go around the earth for about 25 days before embarking on a 300-day voyage to the Martian orbit where it is planned to reach in September 2014.

"About 85% of the goal is to demonstrate technological capabilities and gather inputs for future missions, 15 per cent is scientific objectives,

"If India manages to insert a fully operational spacecraft into the Mars orbit, that alone would be a tremendous achievement," says Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society, a US-based organisation that advocates for space research and exploration.

The main challenge would be to see how the engines that propel the orbiter into the Martian atmosphere work after remaining silent for 300 days, and how the craft's insulation holds up on the voyage.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said that filling of monomethyhydrazine into the fourth stage of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C25 for the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has been completed.

Globally, there have been 51 missions to Mars till date. Of these, only 21 have been successful. This is enough indication of the complexity of such missions. This is India’s first interplanetary mission. We had to calibrate our hardware to withstand a territory not experienced before. Since there is a propagation delay of 20 minutes (one way) when we communicate with the spacecraft, because of its distance from Earth, the spacecraft has to be ‘intelligent’ enough to take care of itself during that period.

ISRO's Radhakrishnan says the agency's overall budget is 0.34 percent of the total national budget. He says the portion of the agency budget given to planetary exploration is 7 percent. And, he argues, such missions could "percolate to" applications like cyclone forecasting.

Rahul M wrote:where's the comment section ?

Rahul M wrote:where's the comment section ?

Success would be a source of national pride for Indians, whose 2008 unmanned mission to the moon helped prove the existence of water in another leap forward, 39 years after Neil Armstrong set foot there.
It would also bolster the reputation of India, the land of the world's cheapest car, as a leader in low-cost innovation. The project was announced in August 2012 with a budget of only 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million).

He also defends ISRO and its 16,000-strong workforce against suggestions that New Delhi should not be spending on space when more than a third of all children are malnourished and half of Indians have no toilets.
"Space is one area right from the beginning that has been contributing to the development process of the country," he said, pointing to better weather forecasting for farmers and satellite communication networks

Instead of flying directly, the 350-tonne rocket will orbit earth for nearly a month, building up the necessary velocity to break free from the earth's gravitational pull.

Upendra Choudhury, an associate professor at Aligarh Muslim University who is an expert on India's ballistic missile programme, says the spending has also boosted national security.

SwamyG wrote:http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013 ... on-to-mars

However the comments section is heartening.

SwamyG wrote: One or two trolls as well.

This mission, he insists, is different. “In the previous missions, satellite injections would take place after 20 minutes. This time, it will take place after more than 40 minutes. Also, since the temperature will fall drastically, thermal control features have been added.” The more than 16,000 employees of Isro, who have made the technological and scientific contributions to the mission are aware that even after the spacecraft is launched, the road ahead is dotted with challenges before it finally enters the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014. But the scientists are upbeat. “Every mission has a failure risk. That does not mean that you do not foray into it,” says Vijaya Sardhi, group director, programme management. Agrees Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of the Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 missions: “We are all optimistic, but at the same time we are all praying that the mission meets its goals and objectives. Considering that there have been several missions to Mars but few have actually succeeded, we have to be careful.”

Many moons ahead
It’s a giant leap ahead from India’s 2008 moon mission. “You cannot compare the two. In Chandrayaan-1, we had to cover a distance of around 4 lakh km, the travel distance now is nearly 200 to 400 million km. Also, Chadrayaan-1 remained within the Earth’s sphere of influence all along. The Orbiter will move from the Earth’s sphere of influence to the Sun’s sphere of influence, and finally to Mar’s sphere of influence,” explains Annadurai.

"This is just a revolutionary step towards space invention," Associate Professor Upendra Lad at Department of Physics who studied at MSG Arts Commerce and Science College, told AA.

When asked about the amount of money India is spending on this mission – estimated at $70 million - given the abject poverty in India and the number of Indians living under the below poverty line, he dismissed the comparison.

"It’s foolhardy to evaluate this mission in terms of extravagant space spending and growing poverty. One never knows the impact and future gain of the mission," he asserted.

Mujahid Ansari, assistant professor at the department of chemistry, AIT College of Arts, Commerce and Science, agrees.

"There may not be any immediate gain of Mars mission as space exploration is a time-consuming process," he told AA, dismissing the unwarranted criticism of the space mission.

"Bringing in the poverty politics into science, technology and space exploration is a reflection of a sick and hypocritical mind," Ansari insisted.

He cited the recent coal allocation scam in India where the Comptroller and Auditor General put the loss to public exchequer at $28 billion.

"Did anybody raise and compare India’s poverty when CAG tabled its report in Indian parliament stating $28 billion loss?" Ansari fumed.

When asked whether India’s mission to Mars is a desire to beat China, Ansari dismissed the suggestions.

"It is purely driven by science and nothing else. If in doing so, India overtakes China in space exploration, why make a fuss about it?" he said.

Some experts believe that MOM focuses more on technological than scientific objectives but Ansari disagrees.

"It is harmonious balance between technology and science. MOM will not only demonstrate the capability to enter Mars orbit but it will also search for methane in the Martian atmosphere," he argued.

succeed across all these steps, you need the very best rocket scientists, computer programmers, artificial intelligence experts, planetary geophysicists, radar and long-range communications engineers, physicists, chemists, material scientists, metallurgists and dozens of other specialists in many disciplines, working as one. If even one of them is not at the very top of their game, the mission could end in failure.So yes, Mangalyaan is a long shot, but success would mean that India has acheived a level of cutting-edge scientific and technological capabilities previously present in only three scientific communities. It would become a fantastic case study and calling card for investing in India's high-tech industries and education.
Emily Lakdawalla, a scientist and blogger at the Planetary Society, addresses the question about funding space research while fighting poverty more directly:"...there's an error in the question. It assumes that there is a fixed quantity of wealth in India, and that stopping investment in high-tech industry would mean more money for the poor. Wealth doesn't work that way; there is not a fixed quantity of it. The technology India is developing for this mission has direct commercial applications, generating economic activity that will increase the nation's overall wealth. And I think that backers of India's space program believe that achieving a successful mission to Mars would increase confidence in India's technological prowess and therefore the flow of investment money. To be seen in the company of the U.S. and China and Europe would have to stimulate such investment."

Antariksh Bhavan, the heavily fortified headquarters of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on New BEL Road in Bangalore has been abuzz with a series of activities ahead of India's big-ticket Mars Mission. Located on the first floor is the office of ISRO Chairman Dr Koppillil Radhakrishnan, who was at the door to welcome the Talkathon crew. When told that the interview will be hovering around 'the Man behind the Mars movement and not the much-talked about Mangalyaan,' RK quickly got into mission mode. “You see, I am a simple person. I will be happy to share whatever you want to know,” he said. Further, while explaining the template of the Talkathon interview series, RK said: “Although I hail from Irinjalakuda (Thrissur district in Kerala), I am more a Bangalorean now. It's an affair of over 22 years. I have sweet memories of this great city.” Excerpts.

Unlike the previous PSLV missions, which lasted about 18 minutes to put remote sensing satellites into orbit, the flight duration of PSLV-C25 will last a suspenseful 43 minutes before the rocket’s fourth stage puts the spacecraft into orbit. “This is the speciality of the mission,” said B. Jayakumar, Vehicle Director. As Mr. Jayakumar and R. Hutton, Associate Vehicle Director, stood a couple of hundred metres in front of the Mobile Service Tower encasing the four-stage PSLV-C25 on October 30, they asserted that “the PSLV is a rain-proof vehicle.”

Besides the 43-minute flight, yet another mission speciality is the 25-minute coasting phase between the third stage burn-outand the fourth stage ignition. A third speciality is that it is only 37seconds after the fourth stage burn-out that the spacecraft will be injected into orbit.

V. Seshagiri Rao, Associate Director, SDSC, said several ground stations, including two ship-borne radars in the South Pacific Ocean, would track the vehicle and its positional information would be received every 100 milliseconds.

Haresh wrote:And here we go folks, the poison from the British media has started flowing...........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ramme.html

• Second Stage (PS2) Propellant filling commenced.
• Mobile Service Tower (MST) withdrawal upto 50m is completed.

The technologies developed in building India's Mars Orbiter can be incorporated in other satellites the country would build saving costs and increasing performance, say Indian space scientists.

Speaking to IANS, scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the self corrective programmes incorporated in the orbiter, miniaturisation of components, cold starting of the orbiter engine after a gap of 300 days and other things can be incorporated in remote sensing and communication satellites that are built by India.

"The huge autonomy given to the space craft to fend for itself without human intervention from the ground, miniaturisation of components and other technologies can be incorporated in other satellites that India builds," A.S. Kiran Kumar, director at ISRO's Space Application Centre said.

"This is the first time in the world that anybody has realised a spacecraft like this in 15 months flat. If all the systems we have built works successfully, then we can say that India is one of the top nations in building satellites," S. Arunan, project director, Mars Oribiter Mission said

In addition, the space craft has been programmed to self diagnose and take corrective actions on its own. Normally people on the ground stations give commands to the satellites on corrective actions.

Queried about the benefits of these technologies, Arunan said: "These can be incorporated in our remote sensing/earth observation and communication satellites."

The MOM will chalk up some firsts in the history of Mars exploration, too. It is the first mission to be launched into an elliptical Earth orbit. Space agencies like the Nasa and the ESA prefer a straight flight trajectory out to Mars. Besides, it is the first Mars mission to use a light booster like the PSLV

And the mission has been realised at an incredibly low budget: its Rs. 450-crore price tag is less than 0.01% of India’s annual budget, making it the cheapest ever to head for Mars. The Nasa, the ESA and Japan’s JAXA spend several times more. In comparison, Nasa’s new Mars mission, MAVEN, scheduled for launch November 18, took almost six years to fabricate, and cost more than 10 times. “Isro’s budget for 2010 happens to be our highest ever. And it’s just 3% of Nasa’s budget for the year 2010,” adds Radhakrishnan. So science apart, the MOM’s success will certainly give an enormous boost to Isro’s standing in the global launch business, promoting investor confidence.

Haresh wrote:And here we go folks, the poison from the British media has started flowing...........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ramme.html