Excellent news glad they recovered from the minor setback they had.From the schedule of burns I saw earlier on this thread there appears to be something like a two week gap between the penultimate manoeuvre & the final firing to leave Earth orbit. Is this to allow equipment to be further checked out before it departs or is there more to it than this?
Quote from: Star One on 11/12/2013 06:30 amExcellent news glad they recovered from the minor setback they had.From the schedule of burns I saw earlier on this thread there appears to be something like a two week gap between the penultimate manoeuvre & the final firing to leave Earth orbit. Is this to allow equipment to be further checked out before it departs or is there more to it than this?From the orbits of mars and earth, at the moment mars is ahead of earth, but the earth which moves faster in the inner orbit is catching up with mars. If the s/c were to leave earth orbit now it would have to travel a longer distance by itself. However if it leaves the earth orbit at end of the month, the earth would have carried it closer to mars and hence a lower travel distance.My guess is that leaving earth's orbit around the end of the month results in an energy optimized trajectory.
Excellent news! The next opportunity for a burn near perigee (one orbit later than this) appears to be around 46h45m later. That's almost two days, so ~02:45 IST on Nov 14, if my spreadsheet calculations are correct. It would be great to get a confirmation of that timing from ISRO, though!
^perigee is lower than the previous reported ~345km??
Quote from: seshagirib on 11/14/2013 05:05 am^perigee is lower than the previous reported ~345km??Is there anything to be concerned about with such a lower than expected perigee?
Quote from: Star One on 11/14/2013 06:27 amQuote from: seshagirib on 11/14/2013 05:05 am^perigee is lower than the previous reported ~345km??Is there anything to be concerned about with such a lower than expected perigee?Well, lower perigee means more drag from the upper atmosphere (c.f. Skylab). So, in the long run, the orbit is going to be less stable and will decay faster. In the time-scale that MOM is scheduled to remain in its parking orbit, probably not.
I would've thought they deliberately lowered the perigee to take advantage of the Oberth effect when doing the final escape burn.
Unless you mean that "deliberately lowered the perigee" = letting natural drag reduce the perigee, any propulsive maneuver to lower the perigee would waste precious propellant.
Quote from: MondoMor on 11/14/2013 07:18 pmI would've thought they deliberately lowered the perigee to take advantage of the Oberth effect when doing the final escape burn. Unless you mean that "deliberately lowered the perigee" = letting natural drag reduce the perigee, any propulsive maneuver to lower the perigee would waste precious propellant.
November 16, around 2 a.m., is when the craft is due to get its orbit raised for the fifth time and also the last time near the Earth. (ISRO discounts the November 12 correction as a supplement of the fourth operation.)
In the next few days through November 30, some payloads or instruments on the orbiter are to be switched on as part of trials.