MarsNews.com
October 4th, 2019

An Indian orbiter reached Mars five years ago, and it’s still ticking

Artist’s rendering of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft at the Red Planet. ISRO

Without fanfare, an Indian spacecraft just completed its fifth year in orbit around Mars last week. As the spacecraft nears the end of its design lifetime, this is a moment that seems worth a little more recognition.

When it launched the Mars Orbiter Mission in November, 2013, India had never attempted an interplanetary flight before. And Mars is really treacherous. About 50% of spacecraft sent to Mars fail either upon launch, attempting to enter orbit, or landing on the surface. India made it on the country’s first try, with a budget significantly less than $100 million. The spacecraft remains in good working order, with fuel for at least another year of operations.

While the orbiter didn’t make any huge new scientific discoveries—it had neither the very best cameras nor instruments among its modest 15kg of payload—it carried far more weight symbolically as it expanded the community of Mars exploration beyond the traditional space-faring nations. Before the Mars Orbiter Mission reached Mars, only the United States, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had successfully sent robotic missions to Mars.

“It benefits everybody for more countries to be involved in planetary exploration,” said Ali Bramson, a planetary scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona. “Space exploration is hard. So, India’s success as a space-faring nation, especially as one that can put a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, increases the ability for collaboration between countries, both scientifically and from an engineering and technology development perspective.”

August 27th, 2019

Mars Missions Stop in Their Tracks as Red Planet Drifts to the Far Side of Sun

This animation illustrates Mars solar conjunction, a period when Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth. During this time, the Sun can interrupt radio transmissions to spacecraft on and around the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

All of NASA’s spacecraft on Mars are about to find themselves on their own, running simplified routines and cut off from their masters on Earth. That’s because something big is about to come between the two planets — an electromagnetic energy source that’s too powerful to broadcast through or around: the sun.

During this period, known as the Mars solar conjunction, our home star and its corona pass between Earth and the Red Planet. Some radio signals might still get through, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), but they aren’t reliable. Fortunately for all those distant robots, NASA knows this happens every couple years, and the machines are well prepared for the coming quiet period.

“Our engineers have been preparing our spacecraft for conjunction for months,” Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network, said in the statement. “They’ll still be collecting science data at Mars, and some will attempt to send that data home. But we won’t be commanding the spacecraft out of concern that they could act on a corrupted command.”

August 12th, 2019

Mission Mangal New Trailer and Meet the Characters!

One week ahead of its worldwide launch date, the highly awaited motion picture MISSION MANGAL premiered its new second trailer unveiling all new footage from the film which hits next Thursday, on August 15th. This important true story will unfold on the big screen led by an all-star cast including Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Taapsee Pannu and Sonakshi Sinha.

Mission Mangal is the incredible, true story of a scientist, Rakesh Dhawan, played by Akshay Kumar and Tara Shinde played by Vidya Balan who lead a motley team of scientists who overcome their personal challenges and failures to serve as the brains behind one of the greatest missions in history: the launch of India’s first satellite to Mars, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence. The film is a tale of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and inspiring generations to dream big and achieve the impossible.

December 16th, 2016

How India Made it to Mars on the First Try

Although Mars is one of our closest planetary neighbors, it has foiled many space-faring nations wishing to explore it. Missions sent by the USSR, the United States, Japan, Russia, China, and Europe all failed the first time around. Only India was able to make it on its first try. In the latest video in Science Friday‘s “Breakthrough: Portraits of Women in Science” series, documentary producer Emily Driscoll introduces us to some of the scientists at India’s space agency, ISRO, who made it happen.

October 7th, 2016

Mangalyaan’s Second Anniversary at Mars Planetary.org

Global view of Mars from MOM.
ISRO/ISSDC/Emily Lakdawalla/The Planetary Society

On Mars Orbiter Mission’s (MOM) second anniversary of Mars arrival, ISRO has (finally!) made available to the public data from its first year in orbit. As expected, there are no dramatically new science results. The most anticipated results were from the Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), which unfortunately hasn’t found any methane on the planet. This does not necessarily imply that there is no methane at Mars, only that MSM is likely not sensitive enough to sense trace amounts of methane that are present.

Other payloads include the Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), which studies the abundance of deuterium and hydrogen in the atmosphere, the Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIIS) to study and map the mineral surface of Mars, and the Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), a neutral gas spectrometer. MENCA’s science results were already published in a paper in March.

November 3rd, 2015

Red Mars? Discovery of surface water spurs Chinese interest in lander Planetary.org

The gold coloured model, which is a third of the size of the actual probe, consists of an orbiter and a lander. (Photo: Long Wei, Asia News Photo)

Nearly two years ago, China became only the third country to make a soft landing on the moon when its Chang’e 3 spacecraft successfully deployed the Yutu rover. Now China appears increasingly set on doing the same thing on Mars.

This week at the 17th China International Industry Fair in Shanghai, the country’s Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation unveiled a model of a planned probe to Mars. Several Chinese news outlets have reported that the country’s space program continues to progress toward the launch of a robotic mission to Mars in 2020, including both an orbiting spacecraft as well as a lander.

China made an initial but unsuccessful attempt to reach Mars in November 2011 with its Yinghuo-1 spacecraft. However, that orbiter, a secondary payload on a Russian mission to the Mars moon of Phobos, was lost after the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft failed to make the required number of burns to exit Earth orbit. Both the Russian and Chinese spacecraft eventually disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean as they fell through the atmosphere.

That failure dampened some of China’s enthusiasm for Mars, but NASA’s recent discovery of periodic, briny water flows on the red planet appears to have renewed the Chinese space agency’s interest.

October 16th, 2015

Comet’s Close Encounter with Mars Dumped Tons of Dust on Red Planet Planetary.org

Sebastian Voltmer in Germany used the iTelescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia to capture Comet C/2013 A1 passing very close to Mars on 19 October 2014. He used their Takahashi FSQ ED refractor and SBIG STL11000M camera for four 120-seconds exposures; RGB 120-seconds (Bin 2). Image credit: © Sebastian Voltmer.

 

Comet Siding Spring’s close shave by Mars last year provided a rare glimpse into how Oort Cloud comets behave, according to new research.

The comet flew by Mars at a range of just 83,900 miles (135,000 kilometers) — close enough for the outer ridges of its tenuous atmosphere to pummel the planet with gas and dust.

In just a short flyby, the comet dumped about 2,200 to 4,410 lbs. (1,000 to 2,000 kg) of dust made of magnesium, silicon, calcium and potassium — all of which are rock-forming elements — into the upper atmosphere, the new study found.

October 7th, 2015

India’s 1st Mars Mission Celebrates One Year at Red Planet Planetary.org

marsmoonphobos

India’s first-ever Mars probe is now one year into its historic mission, and it’s still going strong.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, also known as Mangalyaan, arrived at the Red Planet on the night of Sept. 23, 2014 (Sept. 24 GMT and Indian Standard Time), just two days after NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution probe (MAVEN) reached Mars orbit.

Mangalyaan, which means “Mars craft” in Sanskrit, was the first interplanetary probe ever launched by India, and its $73 million mission is primarily a technology demonstration, officials with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have said.

May 4th, 2015

Traffic Around Mars Gets Busy NASA

NASA has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and maneuver planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.

Last year’s addition of two new spacecraft orbiting Mars brought the census of active Mars orbiters to five, the most ever. NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission joined the 2003 Mars Express from ESA (the European Space Agency) and two from NASA: the 2001 Mars Odyssey and the 2006 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The newly enhanced collision-avoidance process also tracks the approximate location of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, a 1997 orbiter that is no longer working.

It’s not just the total number that matters, but also the types of orbits missions use for achieving their science goals. MAVEN, which reached Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, studies the upper atmosphere. It flies an elongated orbit, sometimes farther from Mars than NASA’s other orbiters and sometimes closer to Mars, so it crosses altitudes occupied by those orbiters. For safety, NASA also monitors positions of ESA’s and India’s orbiters, which both fly elongated orbits

March 23rd, 2015

Mangalyaan completes six months in Mars orbit Zee News

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), lovingly called Mangalyaan on Tuesday completed six months in the red planet’s orbit.

Previously it was estimated that India’s first inter-planetary expedition will have a lifespan of 6 months, but now, it has emerged that the spacecraft has about 37 kilograms of fuel left, and hence the mission can last for few more days, weeks or even months.

India created history in space to become the first Asian country to reach the Red Planet and the first in the world to reach the Martian orbit on maiden attempt.

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