Mars mission will ignite young minds....... HYDERABAD: The PSLV-C25 with the Mars orbiter which was fired into space from Sriharikota on Tuesday will achieve much more than its intended mission. It will fire young minds to take up science research, said Dr B G Sidharth, director, Birla Science Centre and Planetarium here. Sidharth said the launch established the technological capability of India, and play a key role in attracting young people to look at science research as an important option. Considering that the rocket was put into space at a cost of Rs 460 crore, it could attract advanced nations to launch their vehicles from India as it would be cost-effective as demonstrated by the PSLV-C25. It will bring space business to India, Sidharth said. If the orbiter detects methane gas in the Mars atmosphere, it would be significant. It would mean that life existed on Mars in some form a couple of billions of years ago. The message that we would get is that the planet Mars is hospitable, he said. The bigger plan then would be to put an astronaut on the planet. Eventually that is what should happen as that would be the real test of the future. Such a mission can be taken up with the cooperation of other countries, he said. While the plans for the future will take time, it was a big day for ISROs scientists on Tuesday. It was a perfect launch with favourable wind conditions and weather for the PSLV-C25 which carried the Mars Obiter into space at SHAR at Sriharikota. Though perfect wind condition was crucial at the time of take off of the PSLV-C25, we saw no cause for concern, said Prof A Jayaraman, director of the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) at Adanki near Tirupati. Prof Jayaraman who witnessed the launch at Sriharikota on Tuesday told TOI over phone that the NARL which constantly monitored the wind conditions with the state-of-the-art MST radar, observed that the weather was not at all unfavourable for the mission. It was an excellent launch. So far PSLV was called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle but with the launch today for orbiting Mars, it would be apt to call it Inter-Planetary Satellite Launch Vehicle. With todays launch, we have taken a leap, Jayaraman said. While ISROs scientists deserve a pat for the excellent launch of the vehicle, the most important thing that would be expected from the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is if there are traces of methane gas on the red planet. However, the US vehicle, Curiosity, which has landed on Mars has not detected any presence of methane. Our mission is quite different. The Mars Orbiter would be studying the whole planet while it orbits it. There is much more scope to get results from the Indian mission, Jayaraman saidTOI
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 06:59:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015