Do you
know, what really touched my heart this morning, as I sat amazed
watching the flood of congratulatory tweets flowing over cyber media
to India's space research organization over successful insertion of
India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft into a mars orbit, was a little
conversation between two machines, who are near about Mars.
The
first tweet came from the Mars Curiosity, which said;
“Namaste,
@ MarsOrbiter! Congratulations to @ISRO and India's first
interplanetary mission upon achieving Mars orbit.
Within
minutes came back the reply; the first ever tweet from Mars Orbiter
itself;
“ Howdy
@ MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch, I'll be around.”
(For
those of readers, who are not much familiar with rockets and space
forays, MarsCuriosity is the car sized robotic rover that has been
launched by NASA and has landed on the red planet on 6th
August 2012 and continues to explore it. MarsOrbiter is India's Mars
probe, that managed to capture Martian orbit just this morning.)
This
little conversation, sounding like one from the audio script of
blockbuster movie from Hollywood; “Transformers,” probably has as
little significance as the imaginary blabber between two dolls,
actually carried out by two children, who own the dolls and are
playing together with them. Yet I found this little conversation
especially touching, for the simple reason that it showed the human
touch with which India's maiden Mars mission is being handled.
Mars
Orbiter started its journey last year when on November 5, 2013,
India's PSLV-C25 workhorse rocket lifted off from Sriharikota. with
the spacecraft in its nosecone, The Mars Orbiter, popularly known as
MOM, spent next 25 days in Earth orbit, making series of (actually 7)
altitude-raising orbital manoeuvres before it was launched in an
heliocentric orbit towards Mars on 30 November 2013. MOM managed to
leave the Earth orbit after 5 days on December 1, 2013. Ever since
then, MOM has had a perfect journey. As of 9 June 2014, the probe had
travelled 460 million km in its path to Mars, and was about 100
million km away from Earth.
It
approached the Martian sphere of influence few days ago after having
travelled 680 million km. A test firing of its engine was carried
out on 22nd
September 2014 to confirm that the spacecraft was in perfect shape as
its main engine had been idling for about 300 days since it left the
Earth orbit. MOM did this in style, burning for the designated four
seconds to show that the engine is in fine shape.
This
morning, the spacecraft orientation was changed by 180 degrees so the
same engine that previously accelerated the spacecraft would now slow
it down. Around 7.30 AM Indian standard time, the main engine fired
off and started slowing down the space craft. But within minutes.
spacecraft went in the shadow of Mars, cutting off all
communications. After an agonizing quarter of an hour, MOM again
became visible. However confirmation regarding its slow down and
having captured the Marttian orbit, reached home after another long
12 minutes. First signals confirming that MOM is in martian orbit,
were received from Australian observation stations as expected. MOM
was right on track and its engine had proved its resilience.
MOM's
new elliptical orbit around Mars was found to have aperiapsis (The
point at which an orbiting object is closest to the body it is
orbiting) of 427 km and the apoapsis (The point at which an orbiting
object is farthest to the body it is orbiting )of 78,500 km. The
exact numbers would be known later.
Anyone
would agree that this is no ordinary feat. MOM has costed just 1/9th
of what a similar US probe launched recently has costed to US. From
51 launches made by many countries, only 21 have ever managed to
enter Martian orbit. No wonder that ISRO is flooded with
congratulations from the entire country.
But
the Human touch, with which the mission is being handled and about
which, I mentioned earlier, was perhaps best illustrated by India's
prime minister himself when he jokingly said to the applauding
scientists at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in
Bengaluru; "MOM
never disappoints,"
How true!
25th
September 2014
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