Watched by prime minister Narendra Modi, who joined space officials at Tumkur in Karnataka, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists successfully ignited the main 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) and eight small thrusters that fired for 24-minutes from 7:17 am and slowed down the speed of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft christened ‘Mangalyaan’ for it to slip into a smooth orbit around the Red Planet after almost an year-long voyage.
‘Today MOM has met Mangal (Mars). Today Mangal has got MOM. The time this mission was short named as MOM, I was sure that MOM won’t disappoint us,’ said prime minister Modi, announcing the Rs 450 crore mission’s success, after nerve-wracking final moments at the command centre of ISRO.
Mars Orbiter Insertion was carried out automatically by commands loaded onto the spacecraft after its velocity was slowed down from 22.1 km per second to 4.4 km per second to be captured by the Martian orbit. The spacecraft had entered the Martian neighbourhood on Monday.
The first sign of success in the final moments came when ISRO announced that burn of engines on India’s Mars orbiter had been confirmed. ‘All engines of Mars orbiter are going strong. Burn confirmed,’ said ISRO signalling that history was in the making.
Igniting the main engine was critical as it had been lying in slumber for about 300 days and was woken up briefly for four seconds on Monday. It was a make or break tricky manoeuvre as even the slightest error would have pushed the orbiter into deep depths of space.
Much of the spacecraft’s manoeuvre took place behind Mars, as seen from Earth. This meant that from a point four minutes into the Mars Orbiter Insertion (MOI) burn until three minutes after the scheduled end of the manoeuvre, teams on Earth had no insight into the spacecraft’s progress.
The orbiter will keep moving in an elliptical path at least for six months with its instruments sending their gleanings back home. Mangalyaan aims to study Mars’ surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, a chemical strongly tied to life on Earth.
The spacecraft was launched on 5 November, 2013 on home-grown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra on its 9-month long odyssey. It had escaped the earth gravity pull on 1 December, 2013.
The 1,350 kg spacecraft is equipped with five instruments including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas - a possible sign of life, a colour camera and a thermal imaging spectrometer to map the surface.
‘Today MOM has met Mangal (Mars). Today Mangal has got MOM. The time this mission was short named as MOM, I was sure that MOM won’t disappoint us,’ said prime minister Modi, announcing the Rs 450 crore mission’s success, after nerve-wracking final moments at the command centre of ISRO.
Mars Orbiter Insertion was carried out automatically by commands loaded onto the spacecraft after its velocity was slowed down from 22.1 km per second to 4.4 km per second to be captured by the Martian orbit. The spacecraft had entered the Martian neighbourhood on Monday.
The first sign of success in the final moments came when ISRO announced that burn of engines on India’s Mars orbiter had been confirmed. ‘All engines of Mars orbiter are going strong. Burn confirmed,’ said ISRO signalling that history was in the making.
Igniting the main engine was critical as it had been lying in slumber for about 300 days and was woken up briefly for four seconds on Monday. It was a make or break tricky manoeuvre as even the slightest error would have pushed the orbiter into deep depths of space.
Much of the spacecraft’s manoeuvre took place behind Mars, as seen from Earth. This meant that from a point four minutes into the Mars Orbiter Insertion (MOI) burn until three minutes after the scheduled end of the manoeuvre, teams on Earth had no insight into the spacecraft’s progress.
The orbiter will keep moving in an elliptical path at least for six months with its instruments sending their gleanings back home. Mangalyaan aims to study Mars’ surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, a chemical strongly tied to life on Earth.
The spacecraft was launched on 5 November, 2013 on home-grown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra on its 9-month long odyssey. It had escaped the earth gravity pull on 1 December, 2013.
The 1,350 kg spacecraft is equipped with five instruments including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas - a possible sign of life, a colour camera and a thermal imaging spectrometer to map the surface.