#*** First Country To Achieve Feat At First Attempt *** # India woke up a prouder nation on Wednesday as its space scientists heralded a new dawn of Martian conquest. At 7.47 am, when the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft entered the red planets orbit, India became the first country to do so in its maiden attempt. The others, the US and Russia, had done it after repeated attempts. The European Space Agency got it right in 2003 as a collective effort of 17 countries. Two days ago, Nasas MAVEN space craft reached Mars orbit. When the news reached mission control in Bangalore around 8 am because of the delay in radio signals travelling millions of kilometres from the spacecraft - PM Narendra Modi joined the scientists at Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore who erupted in joy .“Aaj MOM ka Mangal se milan ho gaya, aur Mangal ko MOM mil gayi,“ Modi said, before switching to English on a serious note: “History has been created. Weve dared to reach out into the unknown and achieved the near impossible.“ There was also a fascinating exchange between Nasas Curiosity Rover and Mars Or biter. The twitter handle of Nasas Mars mission said “Namaste, @MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and Indias first interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit”. Mars Orbiter quickly responded: “Howdy @MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch. I’ll be around”. Why the world is keen on Red Planet In recent years, many countries have been eyeing Mars, both with the idea of establishing a permanent human settlement there as well as carrying out unmanned scientific research. The main reasons why nations are increasingly aiming for the Red Planet is to hunt for the elusive methane and determine if life ever existed on that planet because it is most earth-like. Some scientists have also been speculating that life first began on Mars. P 17 It was 54 minutes of sus pense. The Mars orbiter first reoriented itself and then fired its engine and eight thrusters for about 24 minutes to get into Mars orbit. For all the action at the ground station, there was not much the scientists had to do.More than 10 days ago, they had uplinked all the commands for the manoeuvres to the spacecraft. MOM, like an obedient child, carried them out perfectly . For many months -if not years -MOM will remain a satellite of Mars, clicking pictures and sniffing out details on the atmosphere and morphology of the red planet. Between 7.58am and 7.59am, a signal from the Canberra Deep Space Network in Australia transmitted to the control center indicating that MOM had reached Mars orbit. Mridula Dwivedi, a young member of Team MOM, said that the telemetry data from MOM arrived in packages. “From Canberra, the signal was flashed to our control room here through a spacelink extension protocol, she said. Through its journey since November 5, 2013 when PSLV-C25 lifted off from Sriharikota with the spacecraft in its nose cone, MOM has had a perfect journey . The first litmus test came on Monday when it was to carry out time-tagged commands to reignite its engine, which had been idling for about 300 days since it left the Earth orbit on December 1, 2013. MOM did this in style, burning for the designated four seconds to show that the engine is in fine shape. On Wednesday , it proved its resilience. As it goes around Mars on an elliptical orbit with the closest point to the planet around 420km and the farthest around 80,000km, MOM will employ five bits of equipment that collectively weigh 15kg to do scientific studies.The Lyman alpha photometer would measure the relative abundance of deuterium and hydrogen in the upper Martian atmosphere to understand the previous presence of water on the red planet. While the Mars colour camera clicks away , a thermal infrared spectrometer will study heat emission, minerals and soil on Mars. Before India, various countries have launched Mars missions, but out of the 51 attempts, only 21 were successful. India now joins the Martian club that comprises the US, Russia and the European Space Agency . PROUD TO BE INDIAN :) AND PROUD TO BE ASIAN :)
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:01:46 +0000
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