I'd love it if people stopped talking about who went first. We had the advantage of learning from past missions. The ISRO chairman said as much in an interview, but it gets glossed over.
Speaking of MOM's history....can someone explain how on Earth it could be launched 15 months after receiving the government's green light? I guess the individual parts of the spacecraft and its instruments were funded separately before as "R&D effort" projects? Or ISRO et al. simply can work on it without waiting for the snail pace Indian bureaucracy to approve it?When did MOM started to become one project?
Three years ago, V Adimurthy wrote a feasibility report, the first ever, on a mission to Mars. Today, when India's Mars orbiter Mangalyaan successfully entered the red planet's orbit, he said, "It is a dream come true."
Even though the official approval for India’s mission has come just this month, the budgetary provisions were already included in the Union Budget of 2011–2012 and mission preparations had begun. Nonetheless, with the mission’s launch planned for November 2013, there is very little time left for completing all the arrangements. This is going to be a real challenge for ISRO, but it has very little option in this regard: if they miss the November 2013 window then the next chance available would be only around the year 2016 or 2018.Various scientific payloads have been shortlisted by ISRO's Advisory Committee for Space Sciences (ADCOS) review committee. Also, the baseline solar array and reflector configuration of the satellite has been finalized. Various details about the exact nature of scientific payloads are yet to be announced, though. Also, it is not known whether the entire scientific payload would be from India or ISRO is making the platform available for other countries to send their payloads, as was done during the Moon mission.
Mangalyaan, India's 2013 Mars mission, is now under construction
This is a great achievement, I can't resisting pointing out the negativity when this was first announced, 26 months ago, at the start of the thread.(snip)So it is great to see the Indians confounding it by being on time (yes 2013 was a launch window), on budget and, despite the alleged political smoke screen as a motivation, have delivered a scientific payload to Mars orbit on the first attempt.
@RonBaalke at the NASA JPL Mars control room, observing the Doppler shifts@MAVEN2Mars tweeted
Quote"India is the only country to have succeeded in its very first attempt."Maybe the first "single-country" to succeed in first attempt. Since ESA already made it in first attempt with Mars Express.
"India is the only country to have succeeded in its very first attempt."
Just heard @ibnlive that #MarsOrbiter has sent five pictures back to Earth. Will look for them as soon as I am done with TV interview!
Just heard @NDTV where Prof U R Rao said Mangalyaan saved precious fuel due to precise navigation and Insertion and It is now left with around 40 Kg of fuel, if that is the case it looks that Mars Orbiter Mission may have longer life than six months. I distinctly remember one of the article in Times of India, a year back, Scientific secretary V Koteswara Rao mentioned that it needs only about 20 kg of fuel to survive for six months, which has been set as its lifespan there. Ok found the old source
The Spacecraft is now circling Mars in an orbit whose nearest point to Mars (periapsis) is at 421.7 km and farthest point (apoapsis) at 76,993.6 km. The inclination of orbit with respect to the equatorial plane of Mars is 150 degree, as intended. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes 72 hours 51 minutes 51 seconds to go round the Mars once.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 09/24/2014 07:48 amThis is a great achievement, I can't resisting pointing out the negativity when this was first announced, 26 months ago, at the start of the thread.(snip)So it is great to see the Indians confounding it by being on time (yes 2013 was a launch window), on budget and, despite the alleged political smoke screen as a motivation, have delivered a scientific payload to Mars orbit on the first attempt.To be fair, at that time no-one really knows that the project was already undergoing since 2010, and the "final authorization" to build the spacecraft muddles the water even more.
For international projects like this, does NASA "donate" the time in a spirit of encouraging more space science? Or do the projects need to rent time just like anyone else?
Quote from: LouScheffer on 09/24/2014 01:13 pmFor international projects like this, does NASA "donate" the time in a spirit of encouraging more space science? Or do the projects need to rent time just like anyone else?My suspicion--I don't have any hard data on this--that NASA has some kind of agreement with ISRO that they will provide DSN time in return for access to data eventually. But it could also be a goodwill gesture to foster future ties. The cost probably comes out of a DSN discretionary budget.An interesting question is if the MOM data will go into NASA's Planetary Data System database, which would be to everybody's benefit, including ISRO's. Of course, that might only happen after an embargo date so that Indian scientists get first crack at the data.NASA actually provided substantial help to ISRO on thermal heating issues for their lunar orbiter, and I have heard that NASA also provided behind the scenes support on MOM as well (although when I asked the MAVEN PI if he had been in touch with them he said that he tried but nobody responded).