India’s maiden Mars Orbiter Mission: Gujarat Science City holds ‘Mangal Utsav’ , PM to witness Mars Orbiter Insertion at ISRO

Ahmedabad, 22 September 2014

Ahmedabad based Gujarat Science City is organizing a series of scientific programmes and outreach activities in its campus and at Community Science Centres across the State under the title of ‘Mangal Utsav’ during 23/24 September 2014 for awareness and understanding about this ambitious mission as well as to shape their imaginations and dreams for the Red Planet in future.

During this programme, Gujarat Science City invites eminent scientists for interactive session with students, teachers, science communicators media person as well as common people about the Mangalyaan and its historic mission.

Gujarat Science City organized a series of activities for two-day celebration for students as well as common people like Poster exhibition, Screening of scientific movie related to MOM, Special quiz competition, Drawing competition, Guide tour in Hall of Space and Science, Interactive session by Eminent Scientist and RPs, Organize virtual tour through Journey to Mars in Hall of Space etc.

A note by Scientist Narottam Sahu(Gujarat Science City)

Made in India’s maiden Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is ready to enter the Red Planet’s orbit on September 24, after a ten-month journey through space.

India will be the first country in the world to insert a spacecraft into Martian orbit in its first try if the operation succeeds. This will also make India the first Asian country to reach Mars.

It is a great way for India “to demonstrate the indigenous technology and capability to launch a spacecraft and to operate it at Mars.

After leaving Earth orbit on 5th November 2013, the MOM spacecraft has successfully cruised in deep space for 10 months using its own propulsion system and will reach Mars (Martian transfer trajectory) on 24th September 2014.

The 1350 kg spacecraft subsequently is planned to enter into a 372 km by 80,000 km elliptical orbit around Mars.

The 1,350 kg craft is carrying five compact instruments, which will study the morphology, minerology and the Martian atmosphere. In particular, it will look for evidence of methane, whose presence can indicate if earth’s closest neighbour has an environment to support life. It would also help fill the technology gaps in interplanetary explorations.

This awesome odyssey has generated massive interest across the world.

Landing on Mars is a very difficult thing – half of the missions have failed. It is hard to do and with India’s achievement, the country would be in an exclusive club of nations.

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The Mission is not trying to land on Mars, but will just remain in orbit for hopefully a year or more. The satellite has unique instruments to measure the Martian atmosphere, and will be looking for methane gas; for an evidence that life may have once existed on the surface of Mars or could still exist under the surface of the planet – that would be an interesting measurement for them to make.

The camera of MOM will take pictures of the surface, looking at changes in the surface – dust storms and sand dunes and the like. So, the mission will have a unique perspective compared to other missions in space.

The cost of the project is surprisingly low: 4.5 billion rupees, or $70 million. For comparison, NASA spent $671 million on its MAVEN spacecraft.

The 21 century is going to be a new space race, mostly happening in Asia, between nations like China and Japan and India and even South Korea, who want to send a probe to the Moon.

If India’s Mars Mission is successful, it will demonstrate that lower-cost ways to get there are possible and feasible.

The success will open up space exploration to more countries who can’t afford to spend giant fractions of their gross national product on space exploration but who want to spend the most [they can] to demonstrate that they are technologically advanced, to demonstrate that they have the capability to be space nation.

And this is important; this is extremely inspirational to the citizens of a nation. It means the inspiration, motivation and education it provides, especially to the young people in countries that do this. It is just incredibly valuable. It inspires people to go on to understand science and technology, engineering and mathematics, and computers that will lift up the whole country technologically in ways that are very intangible.

Please find the link for MOM animation to have a virtual MOM – Mars contact.

http://sankara.net/mom.html

Prime Minister Narendra Modi to witness Mars Orbiter Insertion at ISRO facility

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will witness the crucial Mars Orbiter Insertion at the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) on Wednesday.

Mars Orbiter Insertion (MOI) operation of the spacecraft is scheduled to be performed on September 24 at 07:17:32 hrs IST by firing the Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) along with eight smaller liquid engines for about 24 minutes.