India conquers mars as world looks on in disbelief

Oct 27, 2014

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is the country's first mission ever to explore the Red Planet.

By Chacko Babu

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is the country's first mission ever to explore the Red Planet.

At approximately 11 minutes past 7:00am on the morning of September 24, 2014, an engine was fired to place the space craft Mangalyaan into the Martian Orbit almost 666 million kilometers away from planet Earth.

No mean fact considering India is the 4th nation to attempt to the Mars and the first country to achive it in the very first attempt itself.

India’s Mars mission known as Mangalyaan was launched on November 5 , 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) from Sriharikkotta in Andhrapredesh and it was just made ready within a 15 months’ time at just $74m coast. The cost is lower than the cost of Holly Wood film, Gravity.

It was Indias first interplanetary mission and ISRO has became the fouth space agency to reach Mars after the former Soviet Union, NASA and the European Space agency but India is the only country to reach in Mars in the first attempt itself and the only one Asian nation.

The space craft is currently monitored from the spacecraft control centre at ISRO, telemetry tracking and command network in Bangalore with support from India’s deep space net work (IDSM) antennae at Byalalu.

With Indias entry into the Mars Orbit, more nations will be participating in the peaceful exploration of Space, the more we will accomplish through joint efforts, it will be more relevent to India’ ability to enhance its devolpment for the benefit of its own people having a robust wed thought out space programe that combines scientific exploration with space utilisation, including telecommunications, weather monitoring, navigation as of huge benefit in that it serves to provide a 21st infrastructure to stimulate economic growth, drive education in technical disciplines and provide dedicated resources and service that will  aid the improvement and security of the country.

The Mars Orbit Mission (MOM) is for the most part of a technology demonstration mission; India is proving that it can successfully deliver a pay load safely to orbit about Mars.

On the scientific side, MOM is a relatively modest mission providing some imaging and spectroscopic observations of the Martian surface and some dynamics and composition studies of the atmosphere.

The observations most excited about are those studying the methane emissions, the sustained presence of methane observed by previous missions suggest that an active production mechanisam is at work most likely tectonic in nature although there are some suggestions that it may point to biological origin.

The MOM observation will help increase our knowledge of the methane plumes and possibily provide some clues as to their origin.

Other facts of Mangalyaan

The objective of the launch was to develop technologies required for designing, planning, management and operation of an interplanetary mission, exploration of Mars features.

One can ask why Mars and the answer is because Mars is near to earth, and its elliptical orbit is like that of earth and can be a potential colony, climate change similar to earth.

Indias Mars mission was approved on August 3, 2012 by the then India’s Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh and the launch was on November 5, 2013 at 2:38 pm.

It travelled a distance of 780million killometers within 299 days.

MOM Pay Load

The 15kg (33lb) scientific pay load consists of fine instruments like Lyman-Alpha Photometer which weighs aprox 2kg, a Photometer that measures the hydrogen ratio which will alow an estimation of the amount of water loss to the outer space and Methane sensor for Mars which measures methane in the atmosphere of Mars if any and find its sources.

Once again I congratulate India upon this great Science achievement in the whole world.

The writer is the chairman of Indian Association, East, North Sector, Chairman of St. Peters High School, Jinja, Chairman World Malayalee Council Africa Region and General Manager, Kengrow Industries Limited.






 

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