Author Topic: ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission - Nov 2013 launch to September 2014 arrival - UPDATES  (Read 787022 times)

Offline input~2

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ISRO Press release

December 01, 2013       
Mars Orbiter Spacecraft Successfully placed in Mars Transfer Trajectory

The critical manoeuvre to place India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in the Mars Transfer Trajectory was successfully carried out in the early hours of today (Sunday, December 1, 2013). During this manoeuvre, which began at 00:49 today, the spacecraft's 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about 22 minutes providing a velocity increment of 648 meters/second to the spacecraft. Following the completion of this manoeuvre, the Earth orbiting phase of the spacecraft ended. The spacecraft is now on a course to encounter Mars after a journey of about 10 months around the Sun.

It may be recalled that Mars Orbiter spacecraft was launched into an elliptical parking orbit with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 248 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 23,550 km by India's workhorse launch vehicle PSLV on November 5, 2013. Following this, the apogee height of the spacecraft's orbit was successively raised through a series of manoeuvres to nearly 1,93,000 km. Besides, health checks of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft as well as its payloads were performed. Since its launch, all systems on-board Mars Orbiter spacecraft are performing normally.

The spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennae at Byalalu.

Offline input~2

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"ISRO has planned four mid-course corrections in case of any deviation along [MOM's] path to the Martian orbit."
(source)

Offline AJA

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"ISRO has planned four mid-course corrections in case of any deviation along [MOM's] path to the Martian orbit."
(source)


They'll have to make interim burns anyway. Until I saw the Eyes visualisations, I hadn't realised that the TMIs for both MAVEN and Mangalyaan took them out of the orbital plane. (I wonder why that was done?)


So, do these 4 include planned burns? Seems to me you could always make adjustment burns at any point along the trajectory? (Obviously different dv costs)

Offline Star One

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Congratulations to all at the ISRO on the successfully completion of this burn & now it's off to Mars. :)

News article covering this.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Isros-Mars-Orbiter-Mission-successfully-placed-in-Mars-transfer-trajectory/articleshow/26656881.cms

Congratulations from the Planetary Society.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/congratulations-due-to-india.html

BBC News article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25163113
« Last Edit: 11/30/2013 08:45 pm by Star One »

Offline jabe

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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

Offline LouScheffer

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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.

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.

Offline ss1_3

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Those anxious moments

They have updated the image gallery with some pics of mission control snapped during TMI.

http://www.isro.org/mars/momimg.aspx

Offline vyoma

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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

Correct. As per this paper extract (though dated), ISRO LAM's Isp is 3041 Ns/kg. So, 3041/9.8 = 310s.

Complete paper here.

Offline plutogno

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25163113

Quote
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.

OUCH!!!

Offline jabe

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Correct. As per this paper extract (though dated), ISRO LAM's Isp is 3041 Ns/kg. So, 3041/9.8 = 310s.

Complete paper here.
thanks for that find.
jb

Offline AJA

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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.

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.

I get the orbital mechanics, especially after tussling with it so much in the last few days.

Having said that though, you don't NEED to have the velocity vectors of the Spacecraft align with that of the Earth, if you're not doing a Hohmann transfer. E.g. if the planetary alignments favour it, and you're going "in" first (perhaps wanting a Venusian gravity assist - maybe to reduce overall travel time del-v), then I can imagine doing the Earth departure burn somewhere around (but before) dawn - while still not diminishing the heliocentric velocity given to you by having launched from Earth. Actually, depending on how much you're going to gain in terms of a Venus assist, and the alignments, even a post dawn-pre-noon burn might work out.

In any case, I was originally referring to the numerous times when the engineering teams are willing to pay a delta-v price, and operate in a "more reliable" zone. So in this case, (still on a Hohmann transfer) maybe give up the benefits of the Oberth effect, and conduct the burn from a higher altitude, where there was still sunlight. That would've required a different argument of perigee for the initial launch orbit I guess.




OUCH!!!


??
« Last Edit: 12/01/2013 11:50 am by AJA »

Offline plutogno

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OUCH!!!


??

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

Offline AJA

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OUCH!!!


??

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

lol, I thought as much.. but I didn't know why YOU were going "Ouch" :D I think Jonathan Amos might've been distracted at the time, or someone else wrote it for him :P


Offline vyoma

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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.html

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/isros-mars-orbiter-mission-completes-motherofall-manoeuvre/437106-11.html

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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.
That must've been scary :)

Quote
We have got the performance of the liquid engine and we got slightly, around 1.75%, more than what we assumed.
Any idea what does it mean? Is it similar to the over-performance that we sometimes see in launch vehicles?

Offline AJA

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@Business Standard, and CNN-IBN: If you're going to care about comparisons and historical records, atleast look them up first.


Quote
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.


ESA's Mars Express was their debut Mars Probe... (if this list is accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars) and is STILL operating, at 10+ years old.


Yeah, you can split hairs, and say ESA's not a "country", and that they used a Russian launcher etc. etc., but I'll remind you that we haven't managed to enter Mars orbit yet, and we've only achieved Earth escape, and a heliocentric orbit.


JAXA managed to do that with their first deep space mission to Halley's comet. Single country, own launcher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakigake


Also.. Japan is definitely Asian. (So that makes us, at most, the second Asian country - even if you discount the erstwhile USSR to "leap into interplanetary space")


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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.
Looks like Mangalyaan is spin-stabilised :P All the orbit raising burns so far've been as autonomous as the TMI. The attitude control thrusters kicking in to augment the LAM on the 4th burn, was a trial by fire (literally) of the closed loop autonomy too - and an examination of whether the spacecraft can take care of anomalies. But none of the events so far have involved S/C transitioning to safe mode...unless they've exercised it specifically, with some remote HILS test.

Offline input~2

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ISRO updates
Quote
Medium Gain Antenna of the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft is powered for long distance communication, subsequent to successful Trans Mars Injection (TMI) manoeuvre

Offline vyoma

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Here's a nice animation of MOM and MAVEN, which I found on Facebook/Twitter, based on orbit data from NASA and ISRO:
http://sankara.net/mom.html

You can switch between geocentric and heliocentric phases.

Offline ss1_3

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Mangalyaan becomes farthest object sent into space by India

Quote
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.

http://netindian.in/news/2013/12/02/00026916/mangalyaan-becomes-farthest-object-sent-space-india

Offline vineethgk

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I'm having a small math problem with the below report, dunno if this is a stupid noob question or if I missed something obvious..

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mars-spacecraft-cruising-towards-suncentric-orbit/article5410838.ece?homepage=true

Quote
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.

Assuming that the current escape velocity of the spacecraft as around 11 km/s, I do get the math of covering 1 million km a day. But with that speed, wouldn't we be covering only around 300+ million km in 300 days? How would we cover 680 million km within the same timeframe (unless the spacecraft receives an acceleration to attain nearly double the escape velocity, that is..). Do the planned mid-course corrections impart additional velocity to the spacecraft?  Or is there some figure or math that I got wrong here?

Thanks in advance..

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