Bangalore: India’s maiden mission to Mars is on course, with its spacecraft Orbiter crossing the halfway mark on its voyage to the red planet, four months after it left Earth on December 1.
“The spacecraft on Wednesday at 9.50am crossed the halfway mark of its journey to Mars along the designated helio (sun)-centric trajectory in the solar orbit,” the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
As the fourth planet from the sun, Mars is the second smallest celestial body in the solar system, at a distance of 400 million km from Earth. It is also known as the red planet due to the presence of iron oxide in abundance, giving it a reddish appearance.
“In terms of radio distance, the 1,337kg Orbiter is cruising at 39 million km away from earth, travelling at 1.55km per second in the sun’s orbit,” the space agency said.
As a signal from Earth to the spacecraft and back takes four minutes and 15 seconds, the high gain antennal onboard the spacecraft will be activated for handling communications with the ground stations.
The Rs450-crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launched on November 5 from Sriharikota spaceport off the Bay of Bengal, about 80km northeast of Chennai, onboard a 350-tonne rocket with five scientific instruments to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, measure the thermal emission and capture images of the red planet from its orbit at a distance of 500km.
The spacecraft’s journey through space is being monitored from India’s deep space network at Bylalu (about 30km from Bangalore) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the US.
“As the Orbiter is on its designated trajectory, the trajectory correction manoeuvre, which was planned to be undertaken this month, is not considered essential,” the statement noted.
Space scientists and engineers are also conducting periodic tests at different levels of autonomy, built into the spacecraft for contingencies. “The spacecraft and its five scientific instruments are in good health,” the statement added.
IANS
