ISRO’s Mangalyaan Orbiter Joins MAVEN In Orbit Around Mars

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
UPDATE – September 24, 2014, 6:10 a.m.
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan (MOM) successfully entered orbit around Mars early Wednesday morning (local time), making the country the first Asian nation to successfully reach the Red Planet as well as the first space program to do so on its first attempt, according to Wall Street Journal blogger Joanna Sugden.
“As the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on, space scientists at mission control in Bangalore, India’s tech capital, announced that the Mangalyaan orbiter had entered Mars orbit after a 10-month voyage from Earth,” she said. Upon completion of the feat, he congratulated the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) team responsible for the feat and said that they had “achieved the near impossible.”
According to Alan Boyle of NBC News, the car-sized probe flawlessly completed its scheduled 24-minute burn, which allowed it to enter orbit following a 300 day, 485 million mile trek. ISRO joins NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) as the only organizations to have reached the Red Planet.
“Through your achievement, you have honored our forefathers, and inspired our future generations,” Modi told the mission team, according to Boyle. “We Indians are a proud people. Despite our many limitations, we aspire for the best. The success of our space program is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation.”
“The odds were stacked against us,” Mr. Modi added in a televised news conference, according to the New York Times. “When you are trying to do something that has not been attempted before, it is a leap into the unknown. And space is indeed the biggest unknown out there.”
Sugden added that the economically-built MOM, which cost just under $75 million to build and launch while NASA’s MAVEN satellite carried a $671 million price tag, had prompted Modi to quip in June that the vehicle cost less to make than the motion picture “Gravity.” It launched from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Center in November 2013.
Over the next several weeks, both Mangalyaan and MAVEN will adjust their orbits in preparation for their respective scientific missions, Boyle said. Both missions are looking to analyze changes to the atmosphere of Mars, and both the NASA and ISRO teams have vowed to worth together in the weeks ahead. MAVEN will focus its efforts on the planet’s upper atmosphere, while MOM will monitor its weather, capture images of the surface and map its mineral composition.
On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued the following statement:
“We congratulate the Indian Space Research Organisation for its successful arrival at Mars with the Mars Orbiter Mission.
“It was an impressive engineering feat, and we welcome India to the family of nations studying another facet of the Red Planet. We look forward to MOM adding to the knowledge the international community is gathering with the other spacecraft at Mars.

“All space exploration expands the frontiers of scientific knowledge and improves life for everyone on Earth. We commend this significant milestone for India.”
—–
ORIGINAL – September 23, 2014, 9:00 a.m.
Just days after NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars, a probe designed and built in India remains on pace to arrive at the Red Planet on Wednesday morning.
If the domestically-built, budget-priced $75 million Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan (MOM) succeeds, it will allow the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to join NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) as the only organizations to have traveled to the fourth planet from the sun.
Furthermore, CNN.com’s Madison Park said that the orbiter could make India the first Asian nation to reach Mars, and Katy Daigle of the Associated Press (AP) added that it would also become the first country to successfully complete the feat on its very first attempt.
Like MAVEN, Mangalyaan was launched in November 2013, escaping Earth’s atmosphere during the early morning hours on December 1 and beginning a 300 day, 485 million mile trek to the Red Planet that is expected to end on Wednesday.
ISRO officials confirmed on Monday that navigation calculations indicated MOM had entered the planet’s gravitational sphere of influence, said BBC News. Likewise, science journalist Pallava Bagla told the BBC the gravity of Mars had already “started acting on the orbiter and it would gather more speed” ahead of its planned entry into the orbit of the Red Planet.
According to Arun Ram of the Times News Network (TNN), ISRO scientists successfully reignited the spacecraft’s primary engine for a period of four seconds on Monday. The test-firing was a scheduled trial to ensure that the liquid apogee motor (LAM), which had been idle for about 300 days, was still in good working order before Wednesday’s scheduled 24-minute orbital entry maneuvers.
An unidentified ISRO scientist told Ram that the agency was “relieved” the engines were in good shape, as there had been some concern that the long duration of inactivity could have caused some components of the engine to be affected by the corrosive fuel used in MOM. Should the main engine fail to fire during final entry, an alternative plan could see the agency fire the vehicle’s eight thrusters to capture the Martian orbit.
ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan told Daigle that Mangalyaan had completed 98 percent of its voyage, and that the mission would “establish the capabilities of India to orbit a spacecraft around Mars.” Likewise, S. Satish, a space expert based in Bangalore, India, told Park that MOM was “a great technical achievement for the country.”
“The mission has been freighted with patriotic significance for India since its inception, and is seen as a symbolic coup over its neighbor, China, which is also ramping up its space ambitions,” the CNN reporter added. “Once it enters the orbit, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission will be in the company of NASA’s two Mars rovers on the ground, a European orbiter, and MAVEN, which has been there since Sunday.”
Mangalyaan, which means “Mars craft” in Hindi, successfully lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at 2:38pm local time on November 5. Its payload includes five scientific instruments: the Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer (MENCA), Mars Color Camera (MCC) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS).