What is Mangalyaan 2
If you are so happy to see India’s rover moving on the surface of the moon, then imagine that after a few days, another rover of our country is going to move on Mars. Yes, you heard it right. India is going to send a rover and a lander. India is going to conduct the Mangalyaan-2 mission to Mars. In the Chandrayaan 3 mission, just like ISRO created history by landing Chandrayaan-3 on the moon, now it is the turn of Mangalyaan 2 on Mars. After the success of Chandrayaan 3, ISRO is preparing for another ambitious mission named Mangalyaan 2. Yes, now India is going to move towards Mars after the moon. ISRO scientists have been continuously engaged in the project of Mission Mangalyaan 2 since 2016. From the 1960s itself, the race to reach Mars like the moon had started between the USA and the Soviet Union. Both were sending missions to Mars one after the other but could not get success. Much later, both were able to reach Mars, but in the year 2013, India launched its first ever Mars mission called the Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan. Its cost was around Rs 450 crore, which was much less than other countries. Mangalyaan reached Mars in the first attempt itself. After the success of Mangalyaan, India’s ISRO had announced the launch of Mangalyaan 2. In this mission, along with the orbiter, lander, and rover will also be sent, just like the Chandrayaan 3 mission now. In several videos, you can see that the rover is coming out of the lander and moving on the surface of the moon. Similarly, India will run the rover on the surface of Mars, and the lander will do its experiments while standing.
About Planet Mars
Now you must be thinking about how India’s Mangalyaan 2 will go to Mars, what will be the process, how different the spacecraft Mangalyaan 2 will be from Mangalyaan 1, and also when it is planned to be launched, so let’s know everything in this article. Before knowing about Mangalyaan 2 mission, it is important to know Mars so that there is no problem in understanding Mangalyaan 2 mission well. For a long time, scientists have been doing research to find the possibility of life on other planets of the solar system besides Earth. After Earth, Mars is the only planet on which there is some possibility of life because there is presence of ice along with an atmosphere. Mars is also called the red planet. The average distance of Mars from Earth is 22.5 million kilometers because both planets revolve around the Sun on an elliptical path. The surface of Mars is very old and is full of craters. A crater is a round or almost round-shaped pit on any celestial object. Clear evidence of the flow of any liquid substance on the surface of Mars is found. The possibility of liquid water is greater than that of other liquid substances.
Launch Vehicle and Payloads
Mangalyaan-2 will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on board a GSLV Mark III rocket. The mission will include a very high-resolution panchromatic camera and a radar to better understand the early stages of Mars, its initial layer, recent basalt, and ongoing activities like boulder fall. The duration of this mission has been kept at one year. The Indian Space Research Organization is planning to launch this mission by late 2024. If it is not able to launch in 2024, then it will be launched in 2025. This time Mangalyaan 2 will not only orbit Mars, but the lander and rover will also land on the surface of Mars and conduct experiments. It will study the surface environment, radiation, storms, temperature, etc. ISRO will use arrow braking technology in Mangalyaan 2 so that the orbital can be placed in a closer orbit to Mars. This project is still in the construction phase. In the AO document that came out for India’s next Mars mission, the payload capacity of the satellite was proposed to be 100 kg. It has been told that one of the payloads that will be installed in it will be an instrument named ARIS. However, not much information has been provided about it. It has been only informed that it will be launched by India. It is being developed by the Space Satellite Systems or Payload Centre (SSPACE), a division of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST). The related engineering models and high vacuum tests have been carried out.
Briefly About Mangalyaan 1
Earlier, ISRO had launched Mangalyaan-1 on 5 November 2013. After traveling for about 11 months, Mangalyaan reached near Mars. It was placed in the orbit of Mars on 24 September 2014. Mangalyaan was sent on a mission to study the red planet, but now Mangalyaan has come to an end. The fuel and battery present in it have also been exhausted. With this, the 8-year and 8-day journey of Mangalyaan, i.e., the Mars Orbiter Mission, has come to an end. This mission was launched on 5 November 2013. It reached the orbit of Mars on 24 September 2014. The success of Mangalyaan was also historic because India became the first country in the world to reach Mars in its first attempt. Countries like the USA and the former Soviet Union, which reached Mars, got this success after many attempts.
Other Missions To Mars
In the last 61 years, 58 missions have been sent. The Soviet Union was the first to start sending missions to Mars, but the first success was achieved by America. This was during the third Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. America has sent the most missions to Mars so far, 29. The Soviet Union (Russia) is in second place with 22 missions, and the European Union is in third place with four missions. India, Japan, China, and the UAE have sent one mission each. So far, eight countries have sent missions to Mars. These are the USA, Soviet Union (Russia), Japan, European Union, England, China, India, and United Arab Emirates. Out of the total 58 missions sent to Mars, 23 failed (39.6%), 31 succeeded (53.44%), and three partially failed (5.17%). Out of the failed missions, 10 were latch failures. 13 spacecraft failed. Out of the 22 successful missions, only nine are operational at present, i.e., only 49 have been completed so far.