Mangalyaan,India’s Spacecraft to Mars Completes half the distance of its epic voyage to the Red Planet Wednesday April 09,2014

Mangalyaan,India’s spacecraft to Mars today Wednesday April 09,2014  completed half the distance of its epic voyage to the Red Planet. At 9.50 a.m. on Wednesday, the Mars Orbiter sailed past 34 crore km while the entire distance it has to cover on its curved path is 68 crore km. In other words, it has covered half the “road distance” in deep space towards its destination.

“This is a major milestone after our Mars spacecraft got out of the sphere of the influence of the Earth on December 4, 2013,” said K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “The spacecraft is on course towards Mars and is in good health,” he said. 

On November 5, 2013, ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) put the Mars orbiter into its earth-orbit. On December 1, Mission Controllers fired the spacecraft’s propulsion system called 440 Newton engine, the spacecraft was bolted out its earth-orbit and put into a Sun-centric orbit. On December 4, it got out of the sphere of influence (SOI) of the Earth and was truly on its way to Mars. 

ISRO has been continuously monitoring the Mars spacecraft using its Deep Space Network station at Byalalu village, near Bangalore, which is complemented by that of NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA. 

Periodic tests are being done on the autonomy built into the orbiter, which (autonomy) enables it to take its own decisions for managing emergencies. 

At present, the radio distance between the spacecraft and the Earth is 39 million km. A signal from the Earth to the spacecraft and back to the Earth takes about four minutes and 15 seconds