A one-kilometre autorickshaw right in India usually takes Rs. 10, and what if I say India reached Mars at Rs. 10 per kilometer? Sounds impossible, right? But someone made it possible, and it’s none other than the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Made possible through its extraordinary mission, a cost of Rs 7 was incurred per kilometre in covering the 650 million-kilometres distance to Mars by the unmanned spacecraft. When talking about cost effectiveness, innovative ideas and uniqueness are thus where ISRO comes in. Flexible approach in every project and innovative use of limitless resources is what makes ISRO stand out from the other space agencies. ISRO is already well known for its comparatively low budget yet successful space missions. Today we are going to talk about one of those extraordinary missions that made India one of those few countries who made it to Mars. We are talking about the Mars Orbiter mission, also known as Mangalyaan. The question that arises in our mind is, how did India reach Mars?
How Did India Reach Mars?
The special thing about this mission was its cost. The total cost of the mission was approximately 73 million dollars, 10 times less than NASA’s ‘Maven‘ Mars mission. Even Hollywood movies like ‘Gravity’ were made for more than 100 million dollars. The question now is, in such low budget and lesser available techniques, how did India reach Mars successfully, and is it still active? The first thing to consider is sending spacecraft out of the Earth‘s gravitational field. It depends on the weight of the spacecraft, which relies on payloads and fuel in it as per the weight of the spacecraft. ISRO needs the equally powerful rocket. The second thing that plays an important role is the perfect timing for the launch. Earth and Mars spin around the sun in their respective orbits at a different speed, and after every 26 months, earth and the mass come closer than the other days. This is the perfect time to send the spacecraft to Mars with the minimum fuel. 5th November 2013: Mangalyaan lifted off from the Satish Dhawan space centre using PSLV, which helped Mangalyaan enter into earth’s lower elliptical orbit. It spent about a month in earth orbit and took a series of seven apogee-rising orbital manoeuvres to enter into the trans-Mars orbit. After 298 days, it was successfully put into the Mars orbit on September 24, 2014.
Why Does ISRO Use PSLV Rather Than GSLV?
Mangalyaan is often hailed as India’s most successful space mission. ISRO originally intended to launch MOM with its geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle GSLV, but the GSLV failed twice in 2010. Waiting for the new batch of rockets would have delayed the mission for at least three years, so ISRO opted to switch to the less powerful polar satellite launch vehicle PSLV since it was not powerful enough to place Mangalyaan on a direct-to-mass trajectory. The spacecraft was launched into a highly elliptical earth orbit and used its own thrusters over multiple parakeet burns to place itself on a transmass trajectory. A total of six burns were completed while the spacecraft remained in Earth’s orbit. With the seventh burn conducted on 30th November to insert Mom into a heliocentric orbit for its transit to Mars, Mangalyaan reached into the Mars orbit on 24th September 2014. Approximately two days after the arrival of NASA’s Maven orbiter, because of it, India became the first Asian nation to have entered Mars orbit and the first nation in the world to do so. In its first attempt, India’s neighbour country China referred to India’s successful Mangalyaan as the pride of Asia. Not only in India, the success was being celebrated and appreciated worldwide; in the words of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, “History has been created.” It is India’s first interplanetary mission, and it made ISRO the fourth space agency to reach Mars after Roscosmos, Nasa, and the European Space Agency. It was also the least expensive Mars mission to date. The Mangalyaan mission, which was initially meant to last for six months, has completed six years of orbiting. On 2nd October 2022, it was reported that the orbiter had irrecoverably lost communications with Earth after entering a seven-hour eclipse period in April 2022 and that it was not designed to survive. Mangalyaan has helped the Indian Space Agency prepare a martian atlas based on the images provided by the orbiter. So far, the Mars colour camera orbiter has sent thousands of pictures, including close-distance images of two moons of Mars. It is the only Martian artificial satellite that could capture the full disc of Mars in one view frame. An image taken by the MOM was the cover photo of the November 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. An illustration of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft is featured on the reverse of the 2000 rupees currency note of India. Mangalyaan is loaded with an instrument that will try to measure methane in the atmosphere. Some scientists see methane as a potential indicator of biological activity; its presence on Mars may provide evidence that it was once capable of supporting life. The Mars orbiter mission has also discovered that dust storms on Mars can rise up to hundreds of kilometers. India’s Mangalyaan mission is aimed at studying the Martian atmosphere; its objective is to explore Martian surface features. mineralogy, morphology, and atmosphere A crucial objective of Mom was to develop technologies required in planning, designing, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission. Isro plans to develop and launch a follow-up mission called Mars Orbiter Mission 2 that is Mangalyaan 2 with a greater scientific payload to Mars in 2024.