Bharat Rakshak

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"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.
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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.
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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/busin ... -bank.html

All health parameters of the Mars Orbiter Mission are normal and a mid-course correction manoeuvre is likely to be carried out in early April, according to S. Arunan, Project Director, Mangalyaan.

“The second of the four trajectory correction manoeuvres will be made, probably on April 9, to make minor changes that may be required owing to the solar radiation pressure on the spacecraft,” he told journalists here on Saturday, on the sidelines of Probe-2014, a symposium at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchi (NITT).

The mission boasted several new technologies, and the onboard autonomy was an important feature. Since there would be a communication delay in view of the long distance involved, the autonomy enabled the spacecraft to take decisions on its own. This option could be incorporated in the future missions of the ISRO as it would help to cut ground complexities and improve the reliability of satellites, he said.

The success of Mars Orbiter Mission, he said, enhanced the image and brand of the country in space technology. The ISRO proposed to bring India’s science laboratories under a wider umbrella to develop scientific payloads for more elaborate studies and investigations on planets, even possibly for a landing mission.

Later, in a presentation at the symposium, hosted by the Electronics and Communication Engineering Association of the NITT, Mr. Arunan said the Mars Orbiter Mission proved the country’s capabilities in deep space communication, navigation, mission planning and management.

ray_donovan wrote:Sirs, Can some one explain how the MOM is tracked enroute to Mars without any GPS with such precision?Can a star tracker do this?Wouldn't dust/meteor/asteroid/bright light from a star explosion make it difficult to use?

cskindia wrote:why the mission duration was fixed at 300 days?

The passage of a comet, Siding Spring, will be the first astronomical event that the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft or 'Mangalyaan'...
The comet that is scheduled to fly past the red planet on October 19 could pose a potential threat to the survival of the orbiter.
"After the spacecraft is captured in the Mars' orbit, we will encounter the Siding Spring comet that will engulf Mars in October," said AS Kiran Kumar, director Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) while talking about the spacecraft that is scheduled to enter the orbit of Mars on September 24.
In a spectacular event on October 19, the MOM will encounter comet Siding Spring, that will come closer to the Red planet than any recorded comet has ever passed Earth. The comet was discovered in 2013 by Robert H McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory.

With just two months before India's first mission to Mars arrives at its destination, the country's space agency has announced a second mission to launch between 2017 and 2020.

The mission would be in addition to a one to the Sun planned for launch in 2017 and is a signal of India's ever-growing ambitions for space exploration....