Updates New boy around the Red Planet - the 2013 Indian Mars Orbiter update thread!

[Cosmic Penguin]

And now the probe's back on track!

ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission
6 minutes ago
MOM’s Midnight Manoeuvers !

The supplementary orbit raising manoeuver of ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, to raise the apogee height to about 1 lakh km completed successfully.

(P.S. 1 lakh = 100000)

 

[IronRain]

Cool!

 

[Ripley]

Go MOM!! :thumbup:

 

[orb]

The Space Review:

• To Mars with no ambiguity of purpose
  
  
• India’s Mars Mission: the media converts science to a soap opera

 

[Ripley]

What is the period of this latest "lakh km orbit"?
I'm anxiously waiting for the next burn...

 

[sorindafabico]

What is the period of this latest "lakh km orbit"?
I'm anxiously waiting for the next burn...

Assuming a semi-major axis of 56478 km [(100000+2*6378+200)/2], the period is 1.55 days, or 37.1 hours.

 

[MattBaker]

According to zarya.com's great calendar (25 years ago Buran had its only flight to space!) there will be a thruster firing this evening UTC.

And if you click the orbit details it gives a period of 2802 minutes or 46.7 hours after the 11th November compensation burn.

This one is also the penultimate one. This one, four orbits and the last one on November 30 (when Maven is already en route!).


Somehow this kind of mission is more exciting than NASA's 50 minutes to Mars trajectory.:lol:

 

[Ripley]

And here we have it!

http://www.isro.gov.in/mars/updates.aspx

The fifth orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 01:27:00 hrs(IST) on Nov 16, 2013, with a burn Time of 243.5 seconds has been successfully completed.The observed change in Apogee is from 118642km to 192874km.

 

[Ripley]

First photo ever taken by Mars Color Camera on board Mangalyaan.

And here's MOM's real time position: http://sankara.net/mom.html

Mars Orbiter Mission, Indian Space Research Organization
Inner solar system and MOM / MAVEN orbit diagram generated using NASA JPL HORIZONS Ephemerides.
This animation works best with the Google Chrome browser. Firefox works; but produces jittery animation. I won't talk about IE.
Copyright (c) 2013 Sankaranarayan K V; this file is published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

With MAVEN well on its way this little probe will finally leave Earth's orbit later today! MOM will start its TMI burn at 19:19 UTC, with the burn lasting 23 minutes (actually not that long, as the Indian comsats MOM is based on does that routinely for reaching geostationary orbit).

 

[Unstung]

The final orbit raising burn was successful!

The Planetary Society: "Congratulations due to India: Mars Orbiter Mission is on the way to Mars!"

Today I am delighted to welcome India into the ranks of interplanetary travelers. Today their Mars Orbiter Mission has successfully propelled itself onto an interplanetary trajectory, departing Earth forever and setting sail for Mars. No matter what happens to the spacecraft between now and next September, India has achieved interplanetary travel. Congratulations to India, to the Indian Space Research Organisation, to the mission's scientists and engineers, and to the people of India.

As reported on ISRO's website, the rocket burned for 1328.89 seconds to impart an incremental velocity of 647.96 m/sec. Here's a little animation I put together from photos posted to the mission's Facebook page:

[...]

ISRO:

• Trans Mars Injection (TMI) operations completed successfully. The liquid engine burn time was 1328.89 sec and the imparted incremental velocity was 647.96 m/sec.
• Trans Mars Injection (TMI) operations in progress.
• Trans Mars Injection (TMI) operation began at 00:49 hrs (IST) on Sunday Dec 01, 2013.
• Forward rotation of spacecraft, to put it into the right orientation to perform Trans Mars Injection (TMI) operation has been completed successfully at 00:30 hrs IST on Dec 1, 2013

BBC: "Indian probe begins journey to Mars"

Early on Sunday the spacecraft fired its main engine for more than 20 minutes, giving it the correct velocity to leave Earth's orbit.

It will now cruise for 680m km (422m miles), setting up an encounter with its target on 24 September 2014.

[...]

India's PSLV rocket - the second choice for the mission after a beefier launcher failed - was not powerful enough to send the MOM on a direct flight to Mars.

So engineers opted for a method of travel called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit to propel the spacecraft from Earth to Mars with the least amount of fuel possible.

 

[sorindafabico]

The "race" between MOM and MAVEN:

http://www.sankara.net/mom.html

 

[Unstung]

Like MAVEN, India's first Mars mission is on course and is also less than 100 days away from the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion burn on 24 September.

AmericaSpace: "Less Than 100 Days From Mars: India's Far-Reaching Mission On Track for 24 September Arrival at Red Planet"

India’s goal of becoming only the fourth discrete nation or group of nations—after the United States, Russia, and the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA)—to successfully despatch its own, homegrown spacecraft to Mars orbit took another step forward yesterday (Monday, 16 June). Its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as “Mangalyaan” (Hindi for “Mars Craft”), is now less than 100 days from its scheduled 24 September entry into orbit around the Red Planet. “MOM is rapidly racing towards its target and almost 70 percent of the journey is complete,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) declared on its Facebook page, noting that the spacecraft has presently traveled 290 million miles (466 million km) of an anticipated 420-million-mile (680-million-km) mission and its radio signal presently requires a full six minutes to reach us.

Launched atop India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the barrier island of Sriharikoa, last 5 November, MOM/Mangalyaan’s ability to reach Mars was restricted by the relatively limited propulsive yield of both the rocket and the spacecraft’s own Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM). These factors made it infeasible to inject MOM/Mangalyaan directly onto a trans-Mars trajectory. Instead, it was inserted very precisely into a highly elliptical Earth orbit of about 155 x 14,600 miles (250 x 23,500 km) by the PSLV. The spacecraft was then tasked with executing a series of six LAM “burns,” over a period of about three weeks, to steady expand its apogee to a maximum of 119,846 miles (192,874 km) from Earth, whereupon it would escape the Home Planet’s sphere of gravitational influence and establish itself onto a hyperbolic trajectory for arrival at Mars about 10 months later.

[...]

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Just exactly 2 days after another Martian orbiter is scheduled to enter Martian orbit, this brave little spacecraft is destined for the crucial MOI burn! Early on September 24 MOM will disappear into the far side of Mars where the 24 minute burn will start at 02:00 UTC 515 km over the Martian surface. If all goes well contact should be back at 02:30 UTC, 6 minutes after the burn ends, and MOM should should placed into its operational 423 x 80000 km high Martian orbit.

This being India's first attempt in getting a spacecraft into planetary orbit, ISRO has decided to do a short 4 second test firing of the main engine on September 22 at 01:37 UTC, after it was not used for so many months. The orbit change will be corrected the same day.

If something goes wrong during that test firing, a plan B exists to use the RCS thrusters for MOI - although it will result in a less satisfactory orbit.

Good luck! Many Mars spacecraft has went down on this critical step (heaps of Soviet probes, Mars Observer, Mars Climate Orbiter, Nozomi....) so many hails are necessary for success!

 

[Ripley]

Hail Mangalyaan!!!

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

The test firing of the main engine went perfectly at 09:12 UTC, clearing for its own MOI burn in 1.5 days time! :thumbup:

 

[boogabooga]

Just exactly 2 days after another Martian orbiter is scheduled to enter Martian orbit, this brave little spacecraft is destined for the crucial MOI burn! Early on September 24 MOM will disappear into the far side of Mars where the 24 minute burn will start at 02:00 UTC 515 km over the Martian surface. If all goes well contact should be back at 02:30 UTC, 6 minutes after the burn ends, and MOM should should placed into its operational 423 x 80000 km high Martian orbit.

This being India's first attempt in getting a spacecraft into planetary orbit, ISRO has decided to do a short 4 second test firing of the main engine on September 22 at 01:37 UTC, after it was not used for so many months. The orbit change will be corrected the same day.

If something goes wrong during that test firing, a plan B exists to use the RCS thrusters for MOI - although it will result in a less satisfactory orbit.

Good luck! Many Mars spacecraft has went down on this critical step (heaps of Soviet probes, Mars Observer, Mars Climate Orbiter, Nozomi....) so many hails are necessary for success!

My favorite part of the ISRO is that their PR people aren't adverse to numbers.
Lots of useful things there to make an accurate simulation.
:thumbup:

 

[sorindafabico]

Final trajectory correction inside martian SOI, like my Orbiter missions!

 

[Ripley]

From http://www.spaceflight101.com/mars-orbiter-mission-updates.html

At the time of MOM's orbital insertion, its signals will take 12 minutes and 28 seconds to travel to Earth for reception by NASA's Deep Space Network Stations in Canberra and Goldstone that will relay the data in real time to ISRO's station in Bangalore so that teams can monitor data as it comes in. However, much of MOM's maneuver takes place behind Mars, as seen from Earth which means that from a point four minutes into the MOI burn until three minutes after the scheduled end of the maneuver, teams on Earth will have no insight into the spacecraft's progress.

 

[sorindafabico]

About one hour for Re-Orientation to Retrograde Attitude!