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Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission

Mars continues to be an object of keen interest to scientists in the context of planetary evolution and extra-terrestrial life. Based on our understanding of Mars, which was thought to be probably a warm and wet planet earlier, is now seen to be dry with a thin atmosphere. How this evolution has taken place is still a topic of research.

Mangalyaan (Hindi for “Mars Craft,”) Mars Orbiter Mission is ISRO’s first interplanetary mission to planet Mars with a spacecraft designed to orbit Mars in an elliptical orbit of 372 km by 80,000 km. Mars Orbiter mission is India’s next challenging technological mission out of the Earth’s gravitational field. The major demands were critical mission operations and stringent requirements on propulsion, communications and other bus systems of the spacecraft. The primary driving technological objective of the mission is to design and realize a spacecraft with a capability to reach Mars (Martian transfer Trajectory), then to orbit around Mars (Mars Orbit Insertion) which would take about nine months time.

Yet another technological challenge is to realize related deep space mission planning and communication management at a distance of nearly 400 million km. The polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV was used to inject the spacecraft from SDSC, SHAR in the 250 X 23000 km orbit with an inclination of 17.864 degree. As the minimum energy transfer opportunity from Earth to Mars occurs once in 26 months, the opportunity in 2013 demands a cumulative incremental velocity of 2.592 km/sec. This satellite would also carry compact science experiments, totaling a mass of 15 kg, as listed in the table below which has been reviewed and selected by Advisory Committee for Space Sciences (ADCOS).

The ISRO had initially planned the launch onboard PSLV-C25 (in its XL version) for October 28. That was postponed to November 5 due to poor weather in the Pacific Ocean that hampered the positioning of ISRO's tracking ships. On November 05, 2013 India launched a space probe from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota bound for Mars, seeking to become one of only a few nations with missions that reached the Red Planet. The orbiter was designed to gather data to help determine how weather systems work on Mars. It also was to investigate what happened to the water that is believed to have existed on the planet, and look for chemical methane, a key component to life on Earth.

Only the United States, Russia and the European Union have succeeded in reaching Earth's neighbor. More than half the world's attempts to send a probe to orbit Mars have failed, including attempts by Japan and China. The Soviet Union launched its Mars exploration program in the 1960s. None of Russia's 17 attempts to explore the planet were completely successful, however. The most recent and notable failure for Russia was in 2011 when the Phobos-Grunt probe designed for a return flight to one of the moons of Mars, got stranded in low Earth orbit and fell back to Earth on January 15, 2012. The United States is the only nation to have successfully sent explorers to land on Mars.

India's program had been put together in a relatively short period - about four years. Several analysts suggested rivalry with the other Asian giant, China, whose space program was ahead of India's, gave momentum to the mission. The failure of the Chinese expedition to Mars in 2011 gave India an opportunity to publicly display its capability and in a sense to play one upmanship with China.

India successfully placed a spacecraft into orbit around Mars September 24, 2014, making it the first country to reach the Red Planet in its first attempt. The low-cost, inter-planetary mission put the spotlight on India’s growing ambitions in space exploration and its homegrown technology.

India’s ability to successfully realize the complex mission to Mars in its first attempt, in a cost-effective (Rupees 450 Cr / $74 million)has captured the world attention and propelled India’s image as a credible space fairing nation to greater heights. Elaborating on how low-cost the mission was, PM Modi in June 2014 said that the cost of India’s Mars mission was less than Hollywood movie Gravity based on a space mission. The movie had come out in 2013 and its budget was around $100 million. This capability could pave the way for greater opportunities for Space Commerce including launch services and marketing of Satellite Imageries.

Mars Orbiter Mission is a mission of national pride which has attracted the attention of students, general public, media and international science/ technical community. Importantly, Mars Orbiter Mission has created enthusiasm among the younger generation in the country, provoked their curiosity to understand and discuss space related techniques and is maintaining the tempo throughout the mission.

Designed to last six months, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission stopped communicating with Earth after 8 long years. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said 02 October 2022 that there is no propellant left in the orbiter and its batteries had also drained out. The orbiter went into a long eclipse, and after that, there was no communication from it. The satellite had gone into eclipse earlier also and performed automatic manoeuvres to come out of eclipse and re-establish communications. But if there is no fuel left, it would not be able to perform those automated movements. It is also possible that the antenna is pointing somewhere else while changing its direction to try to re-establish communication with earth after the eclipse as per pre-installed software.