Mangalyaan has a formidable itinerary: a 300-day, 780 million-kilometre (485 million-mile) journey to orbit Mars and survey its geology and atmosphere
Five solar-powered instruments aboard Mangalyaan will gather data to help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on Mars in large quantities
Mangalyaan will also search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes
The 1,350-kilogram unmanned orbiter must travel 485 million miles over 300 days to reach the red planet by September 2014
Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Hindi, is the size of a small car. It is golden in colour and will be carried by a rocket much smaller than American or Russian equivalents
Lacking the power to fly directly, the 350-tonne launch vehicle will orbit Earth for nearly a month, building up the necessary velocity to break free from our planet's gravitational pull.
Only then will it begin the second stage of its nine-month journey which will test India's scientists to the full, five years after they sent a probe called Chandrayaan to the moon
The total cost of the project is 450 crores
Objectives
The primary objective of the Mars Orbiter Mission is to showcase India's rocket launch systems, spacecraft-building and operations capabilities. The secondary objective is to explore Mars' surface features, morphology, mineralogy and Martian Atmosphere using indigenous scientific instruments
The main objective of this first Indian mission to Mars is to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission, comprising the following major tasks -
- Design and realisation of a Mars orbiter with a capability to perform Earth bound manoeuvres, cruise phase of 300 days, Mars orbit insertion / capture, and on-orbit phase around Mars.
- Deep space communication, navigation, mission planning and management.
- Incorporate autonomous features to handle contingency situations.
Launch, transfer and orbit
ISRO will use its ''Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle''(PSLV-XL)Rocket which will place the Mars Orbiter Mission into Earth orbit, then six engine firings will raise that orbit to one with an apogee of 23,000 kilometres (14,000 mi) and a perigee of 238 kilometres (148 mi) where it will remain for about 25 days. A final firing in 30 November 2013 will send MOM onto an interplanetary trajectory. Mars orbit insertion is planned for 24 September 2014 02:34 and would allow the spacecraft to enter a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 76.72 hours and a periapsis of 377 kilometres (234 mi) and apo-apsis of 80,000 kilometres (50,000 mi) around Mars
A 350-tonne rocket carrying the 1,340-kg spacecraft lifted clear of the space facility on time at 2.38pm. It later put the spacecraft into an elliptic parking orbit of the Earth around 3.30pm
Note
In 2008-09, the Indian Space and Research Organisation successfully launched a lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1(launched in Oct 2008 and operated until August 2009) which discovered evidence of water on the moon. Mangalyaan was developed from technology tested during the Chandrayaan mission
This is India's first Mars mission, and no country has been fully successful on its first try. More than half the world's attempts to reach Mars - 23 out of 40 missions - have failed, including missions by Japan in 1999 and China in 2011
ISRO had planned the launch on October 28,2013 but due to bad weather the launch has been delayed by 1 week
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