Starship Asterisk*

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Mars Orbiter Mission prepares for Mars arrival

Posted by Srinivas Laxman

2014/09/16 18:12 UTC
The countdown for the crucial and nerve-wracking Mars orbit insertion of India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) on September 24 has kicked off. At ISRO's telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore, the mood among the scientists is right now a mixture of optimism, excitement, and nervous apprehension. ...

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-la ... eline.html

Mars Orbiter Mission arrival timeline
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2014/09/16 18:11 UTC
Mars Orbiter Mission's fated arrival day is approaching fast! ISRO released a timeline of the critical orbit insertion events yesterday, and I thought it would be handy to people for me to convert this to some other time zones. Also, one item in the ISRO timeline made it clear that all of the times they are mentioning in public communication are spacecraft event time -- that is, the time on the spacecraft's clock when the events take place. But we on Earth will be 224 million kilometers from Mars on that day, and it will take 12.5 minutes for the signals from the spacecraft to reach Earth. So I have also added those 12.5 minutes to the times listed below, making them Earth Received Time.
...

NASA Television will broadcast live the Sunday, Sept. 21, Mars orbital insertion of the agency’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, from 9:30 to 10:45 p.m. EDT. The broadcast also will be available on the agency’s website.

The program, originating from the Lockheed Martin Facility in Littleton, Colorado, will feature live camera views of mission control, interviews with senior NASA officials and mission team members, and mission video footage. The spacecraft’s mission timeline starts the spacecraft orbit insertion at approximately 9:50 p.m. EDT.

bystander wrote: Two Mars orbit insertions within a week!

MargaritaMc wrote:

bystander wrote: Two Mars orbit insertions within a week!

It's getting to be a popular tourist resort.

Planetary Society guest blog, Srinivas Laxman

2014/09/22

...following the successful entry of NASA's MAVEN at Mars on Monday, NASA scientists have emphasised the need for greater collaboration and sharing of data between NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM scientists. Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said that as both MOM and MAVEN get into orbit and scientists begin to understand their data these opportunities will grow. He said that ISRO and NASA scientists have already initiated discussions on this issue. Scientists of ISRO and NASA are working on a mechanism to collaborate on setting up a joint Mars working group under the auspices of the State Department's US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group. ...

BBC: India's first Mars satellite 'Mangalyaan' enters orbit
India has successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth nation or geo-bloc to do so.

The Mangalyaan robotic probe, one of the cheapest interplanetary missions ever, will soon begin work studying the Red Planet's atmosphere.

...[Prime Minister] Mr Modi congratulated the scientists and said: "Today, all of India should celebrate our scientists. Schools, colleges should applaud this."

"If our cricket team wins a tournament, the nation celebrates. Our scientists' achievement is greater," he added.

The total cost of the Indian mission has been put at 4.5bn rupees ($74m; £45m), which makes it one of the cheapest interplanetary space missions ever. Nasa's recent Maven mission cost $671m.

MargaritaMc wrote:
BBC: India's first Mars satellite 'Mangalyaan' enters orbit

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-la ... f-mom.html
... What makes Mars Orbiter Mission so special is not what happened in the past in other countries.

Mars Orbiter Mission was homegrown in India, built by a successful and skilled Indian aerospace establishment, carrying Indian-built instruments and operated out of Bangalore; the main foreign contribution to this mission's success has been the irreplaceable communications services of NASA's Deep Space Network, delivering Mars Orbiter Mission's messages to Earth. I've witnessed such a swelling of pride among the Indians I follow on Twitter, and not the kind of pride created at somebody else's expense, but rather the kind that expands you from inside and makes you walk an inch taller and raise your eyes to distant horizons. India has dared to do something that was previously beyond its reach -- and by daring, and then achieving it, India has expanded its own possibilities. ...

These women helped power India’s mission to Mars
Devjyot Ghoshal September 24, 2014

Click to view full size image

The face of India’s space program has always been a man.
The seven chairmen, including the incumbent, of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)—India’s equivalent of NASA—have all been men, and it is typically male scientists who front the serious press conferences ISRO conducts after satellite launches.
But there’s a crucial band of women, working across the entire range of India’s space programme, that comprise about 20% of ISRO’s total workforce of 14,246 employees. About 10% of the total staff, or 1,654, are women engineers. While smaller than other programmes—at NASA, for instance, about 20% of all engineers are women—Indian women space scientists have risen to prominence in recent years.
...

Mars Orbiter Mission delivers on promise of global views of Mars
Posted By Emily Lakdawalla

2014/09/29 16:15 UTC
Ever since I first learned about the capabilities of Mars Orbiter Mission's small payload of science instruments, I have been anticipating one type of data in particular: global color views of Mars captured in a single 2000-pixel-square frame. Just days after entering orbit, Mars Orbiter Mission has delivered on that promise. The Mars Colour Camera is one of three payloads on Mars Orbiter Mission that has been activated; Srinivas Laxman tells me that Methane Sensor For Mars and Lyman Alpha Photometer have also been switched on. Two more instruments remain; he's promised a detailed report once all five are activated. (Edit: Steven Clark reported that K. Radhakrishnan announced at the International Astronautical Congress that a fourth instrument has now been activated.)

Here is the first of, I hope, many many beautiful color views of our neighboring planet from Mars Orbiter Mission:

Click to view full size image

ISRO
Mars Orbiter Mission's first global image of Mars
Mars Orbiter Mission captured this global view of Mars with its Mars Colour Camera on September 28, 2014, from a distance of 74,500 kilometers.

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