Mission Mars: ISRO's Mangalyaan Heads For Final Destination

India’s much-talked about Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), Mangalyaan, is in the pink of its health and has completed 98% of its journey to the Red Planet. The MOM will script its first date with Mars on September 24.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will face one of the biggest tests of this complicated project on September 22. The Indian space agency will switch on the engine that has been lying dormant for 10 months, and fire it for four seconds to slow down the spacecraft.

According to ISRO, if the engine fires and performs well, the space organisation will fire it for a longer duration two days later and ease the spacecraft into an orbit around Mars. However, if the engine fails to ignite on September 22, ISRO will nudge the spacecraft's path towards a Martian orbit by firing eight smaller thrusters on September 24. In either case, the Mars orbiter is expected to reach its destination within a week.

After the launch of the Mars orbiter from Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota, Mangalyaan’s journey to the Red Planet has been a smooth one. The MOM’s trajectory is so close to the intended path that ISRO did not have to do a correction exercise planned for last month.

"We have crossed several situations that we have not faced before. We are now preparing for all contingencies on September 24," says ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan.

With this mission, ISRO is not trying to do exotic scientific experiments on Mars at the moment. The mission is simply to test the space agency’s ability to take something all the way up to Mars, keep it in good health during the journey and make it go around the planet. Doing experiments while orbiting Mars is useful, but it is not the core part of the mission.

So keep your fingers crossed that ISRO’s Mission Mars reaches its destination and India creates history in the world of space science.
(Image: ISRO)