India Succesfully Launches Mission To Mars

comorin · Tue Nov 05, 2013 4:22 pm

India's ISRO today launched Mangalyaan ,a Mars Orbiter riding on its PSLV rocket, from the Sriharikota launchpad. It was successfully inserted into an elliptical orbit that will become increasingly oblique to assist in hopping over into a Martian orbit. All this for a mere $72M; priceless both in inspiring the nation and in promoting its engineering capabilities.

Congrats, ISRO!

From the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24729073

Stealthz · Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:11 am

Am I the only one that finds it offensive that a country soaking up billions of dollars of foreign aid and where hundreds of millions of people lack adequate plumbing and sanitary services can squander fortunes on nuclear weapons and space programs?

BarfBag · Wed Nov 06, 2013 2:50 am

The Mangalyaan is slated to reach an orbit around Mars in Sept 2014, if all goes well. It will build up sufficient velocity to escape the earth's orbit in about 25-30 days, according to the ISRO chairman's interview after the launch. I watched the whole thing live - even Youtube had live streaming going on from state TV broadcaster Doordarshan, with an active twitter feed as well.

Once it leaves the earth's orbit, the next few months are critical. Mars probes have a long history of early failure among those who ultimately succeeded, with both the US and USSR failing on their first attempts, and the ESAs first attempt resulting in the loss of the Beagle. If the ISRO do make it all the way there, it would be the first time someone launched and put a probe in Martian orbit on first attempt by themselves.

comorin · Wed Nov 06, 2013 3:16 am

Quoting stealthz (Reply 1):
Am I the only one that finds it offensive that a country soaking up billions of dollars of foreign aid and where hundreds of millions of people lack adequate plumbing and sanitary services can squander fortunes on nuclear weapons and space programs?

While off-topic for Mil-Av:

I used to feel that way, but I changed my mind.

1. Nuclear weapons have kept the peace - most of India's borders are hostile and have seen war. Its neighbors are armed to the teeth, have nuclear arsenals and train terrorists to boot.

2. Hundreds of millions of people may lack sanitary facilities, but the solution seems more complex than just building bathrooms. Its a lot cleaner to use the fields than some of the public bathrooms, which can be quite horrific. The answer is education, and some form of discipline, which most Indians are quite allergic to.

3. India has lots of poor people because poor people keep having kids in the hope that they will look after them in their old age. They will remain poor if they remain uneducated, and a burden on the rest of the country. But they have the right to vote.

4. The money spent on India's space program is a very small percent of GDP. It funds local hi-tech industry, employs and encourages scientific talent, and is a source of pride for most Indians, since it is indigenous.

5. I can't answer the question about foreign aid, but much of it is for specific programs like malaria eradication and so on. Also remember that much aid is in the form of soft loans and an obligation to buy the donor countries' goods and services.

6. Despite it all, India is now the world's 9th ranking economy by GDP. It is now a net exporter of food.

comorin · Wed Nov 06, 2013 8:53 am

Quoting stealthz (Reply 6):
Comorin, thank you for your input it does put a meaningful perspective on the situation.

You're welcome! Again, just my take. The hypersensitivity by a few on any India-related topic gets to be tedious after a while.

bennett123 · Wed Nov 06, 2013 5:12 pm

If they can really do this for $72M.....

BarfBag · Wed Nov 06, 2013 5:41 pm

I'm glad to see that - with the exception of the British press - the general reporting of this mission has been positive and has stuck to the mission and technical details. It becomes tedious when every article of any technological progress in India has the boilerplate knockdowns that you know are insincere editorialization.

WingsFan · Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:36 pm

Great news and a great achievement. Hope it goes well until completion.

comorin has already mentioned all the factors on why India's space program is not a financial distraction from the nation's goal to improve lives of its citizen. I just wish to add that the India's space program has already improved life of every resident by providing infrastructure for communication, research and most notably by improving the quality of meteorological models used to predict weather. Recent success in disaster management can be directly traced to this improvement. The space program is having a great impact on improving productivity of farmers.

Mars mission, in particular may not have such tangible results, but it will no doubt play an important part in improving technical capabilities and morale. This is important because India is already on a back foot when compared to China.

neutronstar73 · Thu Nov 07, 2013 9:21 pm

Quoting stealthz (Reply 1):
Am I the only one that finds it offensive that a country soaking up billions of dollars of foreign aid and where hundreds of millions of people lack adequate plumbing and sanitary services can squander fortunes on nuclear weapons and space programs?

NOpe, but it does provide the nation with hope and a bit of national pride, which is immeasurable.

However, I'd caution against calling this a "success" until the probe reaches Mars orbit successfully.

Francoflier · Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:20 am

Quoting comorin (Thread starter):
All this for a mere $72M;

If that is indeed what was spent, then it is very impressive.

It seems that this will not be just a prestige mission, as a few 'niche' experiments will be carried out which will help the international scientific community.
No major breakthrough in the Mars exploration field, but for $ 72M, it's a steal.

india1 · Fri Nov 08, 2013 2:36 pm

Am I the only one that finds it offensive that a country soaking up billions of dollars of foreign aid and where hundreds of millions of people lack adequate plumbing and sanitary services can squander fortunes on nuclear weapons and space programs?

Gauging by some of the earlier responses above, you probabIy are, since you're the only one to have expressed it! I dont know where you're coming from but it's a pretty ignorant statement to make!

* The mission costs, as pointed out above, are a paltry $ amount by western comparsions

* To the best of anyone's knowledge, no foreigh aid was redirected to this cost

* A study of history and geography will very easily show you the reasons why it was a sad necessity for us to develop nuclear weapons (and btw, we have pledged no first use, as opposed to our wetern neighbour, who has also been proven to be a proliferator and has even threatened us with nuclear war in the past)

* This whole program is a technology demonstrator of abilities, a proof of concept, if you will, with spin offs in the civilian arena. Indigenous launch vehicles have put inot orbit locally developed satellites for communications, meteorological purposes, etc etc.

* ISRO/Antrix also offers to launch satellites for a commercial consideration, making forex for the country

* Am pretty sure you didn't know this, but the previous moon mission Chandrayaan helped establish the presence of water on the lunar surface

Granted we need to develop on many, many other counts, but we cannot be left behind on the technology front, especially when the same tech can have other uses

BarfBag · Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:38 pm

The first orbit raising maneuver was successfully accomplished. The 2nd appears to be on Saturday.

blrsea · Fri Nov 08, 2013 11:05 pm

Quoting stealthz (Reply 1):
Am I the only one that finds it offensive that a country soaking up billions of dollars of foreign aid

Can you please specify the countries offering "billions of dollars" of aid every year to India? Would be interesting to see it

MD11Engineer · Sat Nov 09, 2013 10:23 am

As for the UK, India has actually rejected development aid from the UK (and probably other countries as well) since quite a few years, but the charity industry and the British government have been insisting on paying to India.

Jan

nomadd22 · Sat Nov 09, 2013 5:28 pm

Not to interrupt the political discussion, but does anybody know if India has access to the DSN for comms or are they on their own?

BarfBag · Sun Nov 10, 2013 4:16 am

ISRO update page

Quote:
The third orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 02:10:43 hrs(IST) on Nov 09, 2013, with a burn time of 707 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in Apogee is from 40186km to 71636km.

So far so good.

Quoting nomadd22 (Reply 14):
Not to interrupt the political discussion, but does anybody know if India has access to the DSN for comms or are they on their own?

Indian Deep Space Network

Some supportive claims from NASA: source

Quote:
Michael Braukas, a Nasa spokesman has told Computerworld that India’s mars mission will complement research by Nasa. Braukas told Computerworld that India’s Mars mission is not a cooperative one with NASA, but added that the US agency will provide the Indian agency some deep space communications help. The US plans to provide data from its satellites and antennas that show the craft’s position in space, for instance.

nomadd22 · Sun Nov 10, 2013 9:17 pm

Thanks BB. That 32M antenna must be something to behold.

MD11Engineer · Mon Nov 11, 2013 4:14 am

Interesting read for a positive perspective:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24867914

Jan

nomadd22 · Mon Nov 11, 2013 12:43 pm

Quoting MD11Engineer (Reply 17):
Interesting read for a positive perspective:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24867914

Jan

That's a good response for the ones who cry about solving all your other problems before going to space. The inspiration and pride that comes from space missions can be worth more than a dozen money pit social programs that do little but make contractors and officials rich. You don't go forward by sacrificing the future. Those kids with the brains and initiative that makes them great have something to look to.

BarfBag · Tue Nov 12, 2013 2:40 am

There was some minor drama with the 4th orbit raising action. Instead of raising the apogee to 117000km, it only raised it to 78000km, due to an experimental test mode of the liquid apogee motor causing the motor to just turn off altogether. However, the risk tolerant method of doing multiple orbits between apogee raising firings enabled them to plan a supplementary orbit raising measure.

Quoting ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission site:
"Fourth supplementary orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 05:03:50 hrs(IST) on Nov 12, 2013, with a burn Time of 303.8 seconds has been successfully completed.The observed change in Apogee is from 78276km to 118642km."

So that's fixed the problem.

zanl188 · Tue Nov 12, 2013 3:32 am

Quoting BarfBag (Reply 19):

I understood they were testing using the redundant engine systems concurrently and that this caused the premature shutdown. Later burns are time critical, braking into Mars orbit for example, and it's desirable to have redundant systems running for these burns. Thus the test.

Good thing they found this failure mode now....

BarfBag · Tue Nov 12, 2013 5:13 pm

Yes, according to the ISRO engineer who was quoted in the press, for the first three orbit raising firings, they used only the primary coil to drive the fuel flow to the LAM. On the 4th firing, they tried out the secondary redundant coil as well, first sequentially, and then at the same time as the primary coil. It's the last mode that caused the shutdown. However, this doesn't sound like a failure mode - it was probably a mutually exclusive operating mode as designed, but run together due to a misunderstanding. Effectively, both the primary and redundant system works, and the mission remains very much on track.

ISRO has come a long way. Here are some pics of their level of technological ability in the late 1960s:

The guy in the sleeveless vest on the left is APJ Abdul Kalam, later to become President of India.

nomadd22 · Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:34 pm

You come up with a lot of unexpected oscillations and shock waves when you use two fuel paths and static tests aren't going to replicate conditions that vary from zero G to acceleration. Hopefully they have an option or could load a patch to allow the redundant path to take over from the main one in timing critical burns, since it looks like they won't be able to open both at once.

BarfBag · Sat Nov 16, 2013 7:18 pm

Fifth orbit raising action carried out successfully, with apogee now at 193,000kms:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/ISROs-Mars-Orbiter-Mission/1384015488503058

The next one will send it out of Earth orbit and towards Mars.

dtw2hyd · Sat Nov 16, 2013 9:04 pm

Quoting BarfBag (Reply 23):
The next one will send it out of Earth orbit and towards Mars.

Is there another burn or departure from earth's gravity is automatic?

BarfBag · Sat Nov 16, 2013 9:15 pm

There's another scheduled for Dec 1 2013 that will sent the Mangalyaan on its interplantary trajectory to intersect with Mars in Sept 2014.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1393343250903615&set=pb.1384015488503058.-2207520000.1384578289.&type=3&theater

Their Facebook page is quite active, with ISRO actively responding to questions there.

BarfBag · Thu Nov 21, 2013 6:01 pm

The ISRO tested out Mangalyaan's color camera a couple of days ago for the first time, when it was 70,000km from earth. Here's the image it captured of India at 3.5km resolution:

BarfBag · Mon Nov 25, 2013 7:17 pm

The ISRO FB page has again been updated with a graphic of the upcoming inter-planetary shot this coming weekend. The Mangalyaan is currently doing rounds on the blue arc, and will have a 24 minute motor firing to send it towards Mars along the green arc, around Dec 1.

dtw2hyd · Sat Nov 30, 2013 8:34 pm

Looks like MOM left earth's orbit.

Quote:
"India's maiden spacecraft to Mars has left the Earth's gravity to enter into the Sun's orbit on its way to the 10-month-long journey to the 'Red Planet'. In a late night maneuver where the Mangalyaan's on-board motor was fired for 23 minutes, the spacecraft was given a final extra kick through a sling shot mechanism as it began its over-750 million km journey to Mars."

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mi...ns-452989?pfrom=home-lateststories

HAWK21M · Sun Dec 01, 2013 12:08 pm

Quoting blrsea (Reply 12):
Can you please specify the countries offering "billions of dollars" of aid every year to India? Would be interesting to see it

Exactly

Great achievement.......

BarfBag · Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:01 am

Mangalyaan is now farther away than the Moon, and is now the farthest object ever sent into space by India. Chandrayaan, the successful lunar probe/impactor mission launched in 2008, was previously the furthest. Still a long way to go to reach Martian orbit.

TK105 · Tue Dec 03, 2013 2:54 pm

Congratulations to whole team.

Looking forward for a successful Mars orbit initiation. I suppose that will be a more challenging stage due to distance and length of communication line.

HAWK21M · Wed Dec 04, 2013 10:24 am

Quoting BarfBag (Reply 30):
Still a long way to go to reach Martian orbit.

How long......durationwise theoritically.

rwessel · Wed Dec 04, 2013 11:35 am

Quoting HAWK21M (Reply 32):
How long......durationwise theoritically.

The engine burn to enter Martian orbit should happen about September 24th. So a bit less than 10 months.

bond007 · Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:06 pm

Quoting blrsea (Reply 12):
Can you please specify the countries offering "billions of dollars" of aid every year to India? Would be interesting to see it

"Over the last six years, India has received an average $4.3 billion a year from the World Bank through the IDA and the other lending programme, IBRD. "

" In the upcoming five years, India is expected to get $4.5 billion to $5 billion funds a year."

http://articles.economictimes.indiat...981095_1_ibrd-onno-ruhl-world-bank

That is without specific aid from individual countries.

Quoting india1 (Reply 10):
To the best of anyone's knowledge, no foreigh aid was redirected to this cost

Ok, but that's like me giving the guy on the street $10, then he buys some cigarettes, but says it wasn't my money, it was from the previous guy

Hey, I'm just saying - it's a great achievement.

Jimbo

dtw2hyd · Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:42 pm

Quoting rwessel (Reply 33):
The engine burn to enter Martian orbit should happen about September 24th. So a bit less than 10 months.

Will there be any opportunity for course correction or too little(fuel) too late?

eksath · Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:00 pm

I do think it is an impressive achievement so congrats to the team. Looking forward to it successfully achieving all the milestones.

Unfortunately, the nagging questions of the other troubling social issues facing the India take the shine of this impressive achievement due to the $ value associated with this endeavor

rwessel · Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:54 pm

Quoting DTW2HYD (Reply 35):
Will there be any opportunity for course correction or too little(fuel) too late?

I don't know their flight plan, but they've certainly budgeted for at least a couple of mid-course correction burns during that ten month cruise. But those will just adjust the course to get the spacecraft in position for the deceleration Martian orbital insertion burn.

Obviously they have a maximum available delta-V for course correction burns, if they use too much fuel they won't have enough left to enter orbit (plus they’ll probably want some delta-V for fiddling the orbit later). OTOH, there's a trade-off between delta-V and time. Right now a given change of course (as to where it passes the target), is going to be about a tenth as costly in terms of fuel as it would be one month from Mars. So if they're significantly off course, you'd expect burns soon to get closer to the planned course (right now a mere 1m/s would move the spacecraft some 25,000km at the point where it reaches Mars; in late August you'd need 10m/s for the same change).

So there would be a maximum amount of Earth orbit departure error you could correct for, and the amount decreases as you delay making that correction. Of course a large error should be easier to detect now.

dtw2hyd · Thu Dec 05, 2013 1:55 am

Quoting rwessel (Reply 37):

Thank you. As always your posts are very enlightening.

Quoting eksath (Reply 36):
Unfortunately, the nagging questions of the other troubling social issues facing the India take the shine of this impressive achievement due to the $ value associated with this endeavor

On the social aspect Indians benefit a lot with space research. In last few weeks there were three cyclones (Cat-5,Cat-1,Tropical Storm) with only handful of casualties. As costal areas have fishing communities live in straw built huts, without warning and evacuation deaths will be in tens of thousands. In 1977 Cat-3 cyclone 50,000 died and 3.4 Million lost their homes.

Compare these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Phailin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Helen_(2013)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Lehar

To this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Andhra_Pradesh_cyclone

Lot of people are not aware but most of the maps we use daily are taken by ISRO's imaging satellites. Because most of their product is commercial grade, they sell images to Digital Globe, in turn ends up in consumer maps and navigation products. Not sure if US NRO sells any images because they are very high resolution military grade.

It also launched many commercial satellites for others. ISRO has been very active with universities through out the world in launching nano/cube sats built by students. Universities world wide love that option.

So all in all it is a success story.

N328KF · Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:34 pm

Quoting NeutronStar73 (Reply 8):
However, I'd caution against calling this a "success" until the probe reaches Mars orbit successfully.

Indeed. The Mars Curse has befallen spacecraft at points beginning at launch all the way to landing.

BarfBag · Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:18 am

Quoting bond007 (Reply 34):
"Over the last six years, India has received an average $4.3 billion a year from the World Bank through the IDA and the other lending programme, IBRD. "

" In the upcoming five years, India is expected to get $4.5 billion to $5 billion funds a year."

These are loans, not aid. Every cent of that is paid back. You get large loans from the IBRD and IDA when you demonstrate a continued level of creditworthiness and ability to repay in full on or ahead of time. This is no different from student financial aid via grants vs student loans.

As an analogy, if you have a bunch of credit cards, are you getting financial aid from American Express, Chase, JP Morgan or whoever happens to be the issuing bank ? It isn't. It's a form of capital utilization.

The reason for the utilization of such loans is that the WB has the liquidity to disburse a large capital loan at low cost, an exercise that would otherwise strain a less developed domestic banking system without the capital base to support all the needs of a fast growing economy - a critical need for growth is cheap capital.

Here's a pertinent article on the topic:
http://bosco.foreignpolicy.com/posts...ndia_too_rich_for_world_bank_loans
Is India Too Rich for World Bank Loans?

For decades, India has been one of the largest recipients of World Bank loans. By most accounts, the relationship between the massive democracy and the global lender has been mutually beneficial. India gets billions in very low-interest loans with long repayment plans while the Bank is able to disburse loans to a reasonably well-run government it knows well. Just last week, the Bank announced a new $100 million program to help low-income families secure housing loans. In the last fiften yeears, the Bank has provided more than a billion dollars to India for water and sanitation projects alone.

But there's a hitch: India is getting too wealthy for many World Bank loans.

The Bank's lending arm for poor states, the International Development Association (IDA), has an eligiblity threshold based on Gross National Income (GNI) per capita. This year, the cutoff is $1205. According to the Bank, India's GNI per capita now exceeds $1500.

Fortunately for India, the application of this threshold is not mechanical. For several years now, the Bank has classified India as a "blend" country that is eligible for both IDA money and loans designed for creditworthy middle-income countries.

The fact is, this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. India is a reliable borrower with a huge need for cheap capital. The World Bank desperately needs customers like India to make money for itself.

Small $50-200million aid inputs like those from UK are essentially pointless in a large country like India today. They are hard to manage and audit independently, outside of official social support programs. What India utilizes most, is access to cheap capital, such as JICA loans that were used to construct the Delhi Metro.

This may be new to members here:
http://www.business-standard.com/art...-out-euro-zone-112062002002_1.html
India pledges $10 bn to IMF to bail out Euro zone

BarfBag · Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:24 am

Quoting DTW2HYD (Reply 38):
On the social aspect Indians benefit a lot with space research. In last few weeks there were three cyclones (Cat-5,Cat-1,Tropical Storm) with only handful of casualties. As costal areas have fishing communities live in straw built huts, without warning and evacuation deaths will be in tens of thousands. In 1977 Cat-3 cyclone 50,000 died and 3.4 Million lost their homes.

You don't even need to go that far back. Phailin hit almost exactly the same spot at the 1999 cyclone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Odisha_cyclone

Back then, 11,000 people died. This time around when Phailin, which generated an even bigger storm surge, hit, the toll was 45. The difference was early warnings from the IMD using ISROs satellites, combined with the fact that most people have a cellphone and could be contacted with evacuation orders.

dtw2hyd · Mon Dec 09, 2013 9:43 pm

The first of the four Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TCM) would be carried out on December 11.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/fi...vre-planned-for-december-11-456710

https://www.facebook.com/isromom

sturmovik · Thu Dec 12, 2013 6:35 am

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/sci...on-mars-orbiter/article5446749.ece

Went well, apparently.

BarfBag · Sat Sep 20, 2014 5:42 am

The Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) craft is due enter Mars orbit on the 24th of September, on schedule. So far, ISRO indicates everything is normal on board. On the 22nd, ISRO will turn on the color cameras on board Mangalyaan to transmit video imagery.

zanl188 · Sat Sep 20, 2014 12:21 pm

Has been any pre braking burn testing been done of late? Results?

Best of luck MOM!

BarfBag · Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:04 pm

Quoting zanl188 (Reply 45):
Has been any pre braking burn testing been done of late? Results?

http://zeenews.india.com/news/sci-te...rs-main-liquid-engine_1474012.html
India successfully test fires Mars Orbiter's main liquid engine
ISRO's twitter feed
https://twitter.com/isro/status/513980079169232896/photo/1

India's Mars Orbiter Mission tested its last manoeuvre around 2.30pm Monday when the main liquid engine of the spacecraft was fired for 4 seconds. The craft’s 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor engine which had been idle for 300 days since the spacecraft left the Earth's orbit on a Martian trajectory on December 1, 2013, had a perfect burn for four seconds as planned.

The engine was test fired for 3.968 seconds with fuel consumption of about 0.567 kg and with a decremental velocity of 2.142 meters/second. The test was to make sure that the engine is in good shape for the 24-minute manoeuvre on Wednesday.

With this success, ISRO now gears up for the D-day, 24th September. With the engine firing confirmed, MOM can now go ahead with their plan for the Mars orbit insertion without any hurdle.

india1 · Wed Sep 24, 2014 4:04 am

Yesssss! Enters Mars orbit successfully...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...d-Planet/newsliveblog/43284945.cms

brahmin · Wed Sep 24, 2014 4:09 am

Wonderful job. Mileage cost for the craft is less than taking a taxi.

BarfBag · Wed Sep 24, 2014 4:21 am

Congratulations to the ISRO! Getting something of this magnitude right on the very first try, on a shoestring project budget that was executed within 14 months of clearance, is incredible!

Some Martian chatter:

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