On November 5, 2013 India successfully launched the Mars Orbiter “Mangalyaan” Mission. The mission probe is due to enter Martian atmosphere on September 21, 2014, in search of methane.
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This video was recorded a couple of days before the November 5, 2013 launch.
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Phys.Org has reported
the November 5, 2013 successful launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), informally called “Mangalyaan” (in Sanskrit
the "Mars-craft"):
“Indian Mars mission
on track, makes first engine burns”
[The PSLV-C25 rocket carrying the
Mars Orbiter Spacecraft blasted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota, southwest India, on
November 5, 2013.]
India's
Mars spacecraft has completed the first of a series of engine firings designed
to free it from Earth's gravitational pull and propel it towards the Red
Planet, scientists said Friday.
The first
"orbit-raising manoeuvre", which involves the firing of a liquid fuel
thruster, was performed Thursday followed by the second firing on Friday, the
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
"The
second orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars
Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 02:18:51 hours (IST) on November 8, with a burn
time of 570.6 seconds has been successfully completed," the
Bangalore-headquartered ISRO said in a statement
India began the quest to become the first Asian country to reach Mars on
Tuesday with the successful launch from its southern space station of a 1.35
tonne unmanned probe, which is strapped to a rocket.
As it lacks the power to fly directly to Mars, the probe will orbit Earth
for nearly a month and the thruster firings are designed to build up the
necessary velocity to break free from our planet's gravitational pull.
Only once all six of the engine firing manoeuvres have been successfully
completed will it begin the second stage of its nine-month journey to Mars.
The main aim of the mission is to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere,
which could provide evidence of some sort of life form on the fourth planet
from the sun.
India has
never before attempted inter-planetary travel, and more than half of all
missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's
in 2003.
The cost
of the project, at 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million), is less than a sixth of
the $455 million earmarked for a Mars probe by NASA which will launch later
this month.
ISRO
chairman K. Radhakrishnan has called the mission a "turning point"
for India's space ambitions and one which would go on to prove the country's
capabilities in rocket technology.
Comment
The launch is an initial milestone with mission completion on September 21, 2014 when the probe enters Martian atmosphere.
Regarding the oft made argument that India shouldn't have a space program while so many Indians are starving - the annual space program budget is seven hundred million dollars compared to the twenty billion dollars that India will spend this year to provide subsidised food to two out of every three Indians or the $5.3 billion to be spent this year on a rural employment plan http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/a-mission-to-mars-on-the-cheap.html
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Pete
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Pete