"ISRO has planned four mid-course corrections in case of any deviation along [MOM's] path to the Martian orbit."(source)
Wow, just passed over the terminator, and it's just struck me that the burn is happening during local night. Spacecraft running purely off battery power. #NowJittery.
quick question.. looking for the ISP of the rocket engine for the probe. Anyone know details of it? Working backwards with the data given and I am guessing it is around 300s. Anyone know for sure what it is?jb
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.
Correct. As per this paper extract (though dated), ISRO LAM's Isp is 3041 Ns/kg. So, 3041/9.8 = 310s.Complete paper here.
Quote from: AJA on 11/30/2013 06:09 pmWow, just passed over the terminator, and it's just struck me that the burn is happening during local night. Spacecraft running purely off battery power. #NowJittery.It's not a coincidence. Mars injections will always happen near local midnight, since that's when the orbital velocity of the probe adds directly to the velocity of the Earth around the Sun. Furthermore, you want the burn to be close to the Earth for maximum energy gain. So Mars injection from Earth orbit will always be in the dark.
OUCH!!!
Quote from: plutogno on 12/01/2013 09:11 amOUCH!!!??
Quote from: AJA on 12/01/2013 11:08 amQuote from: plutogno on 12/01/2013 09:11 amOUCH!!!?? BBC needs to check its orbital mechanics. everybody uses Hohmann transfer orbits to go to Mars, it's not just a clever option of ISRO to circumvent the limitations of the PSLV
ISRO chief and Programme Director interviewed post TMI:http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/preparedness-for-mars-mission-has-been-excellent-k-radhakrishnan-113120100194_1.htmlhttp://ibnlive.in.com/news/isros-mars-orbiter-mission-completes-motherofall-manoeuvre/437106-11.html
Exactly one minute before the burn started, there was a thunderstorm there and we did not have the data from there when the engine was fired. But within five minutes they got it and we started getting the data in real time. So that is the five minutes gap.
We have got the performance of the liquid engine and we got slightly, around 1.75%, more than what we assumed.
Considering that more than half the missions to Mars around the world have failed - and that no country has succeeded in its first mission - there is almost breathless waiting in the ISRO community.
CNN-IBN: I believe there was some anxiety with no data being received at one ground station?Dr Mylswamy Annadurai: This is at a South African ground station where because of a local thunderstorm, disruption happened. But that's also another testing moment to see how good the mission's autonomy worked. So without ground contact, it has done its function. Before going to Mars orbit where it is supposed to do its own manoeuvring without ground contact ... remember even there it takes 30- 40 minutes to carry out signals - it has already shown it has done its job perfectly. So that way, it's a blessing in disguise, we can tell you.
Medium Gain Antenna of the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft is powered for long distance communication, subsequent to successful Trans Mars Injection (TMI) manoeuvre
According to sources, the spacecraft crossed the lunar orbit around 7.20 am IST and became the farthest Indian object from Earth, considering India's lunar mission Chandrayaan-1's aposelene of 200 km.
As it hurtles towards its planetary goalpost on a path of 680 million km, the Mars Orbiter will cover one million km each day, according to S.K. Shivakumar, Director of the ISRO Satellite Centre, which made the 1,330-kg satellite.