India’s first mission to Mars blasts off in a couple of hours time. The Mars orbiter mission will explore the surface and mineralogy of the red planet, as well as provide a test-bed for the nation’s deep space communication and mission planning. But, unlike, NASA’s Mars Rover, India’s Mangalyaan is an exploratory satellite, so there will be no contact with Martian soil.
That means the Indian expedition to Mars will cost only an estimated $73 million, and only took 15 months to complete after being fast-tracked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his Independence Day speech last year. The project is proving controversial in a developing nation that’s suffering a currency crisis.
6-month mission
The TKTK satellite is inside this casing, which will sit atop the PSLV C25 rocket as it blasts out of Earth.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) says the Mangalyaan (which means “Mars craft” in Hindi) satellite will first slingshot around Earth one time and then take nine months to travel over 780 million kilometers to Mars. After looping into Mars’ gravity and getting onto the right orbit, the mission will spend six months analyzing the planet. At its closest point, the satellite will be 365 kilometers from the surface of Mars.
India’s Mars orbiter, notes the NextBigWhat blog, has five payloads: a Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), a Mars Color Camera (MCC), the Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), the Mars Exospheric neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), and a Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS). It weighs 1,337 kg.
Only the former Soviet Union, the United States, and Europe have reached Mars. China tried but failed in 2011 when the Yinghuo-1 probe failed to leave the Earth’s orbit and was lost in space.
India’s launch is scheduled for today at 14:38 (IST), which is 17:08 Singapore/China time.
The SpaceFlightNow site has a live video feed.
(Editing by Josh Horwitz)
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