A scientist works on the Mars Orbiter vehicle at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s sattellite centre in Bangalore yesterday.
Bangalore: India has built the orbiter for the country’s maiden Mars mission in October-November, to take off from the spaceport at Sriharikota off the Bay of Bengal, an official said yesterday.
“The Mars orbiter is in the final stages of testing for launch between October 21 and November 19 on board a rocket with five scientific instruments to conduct various experiments after a nine-month voyage to the red planet,” Indian Space Research Organisation satellite centre director S K Shivkumar told reporters here.
As the fourth planet from sun, Mars is the second-smallest celestial body in the solar system, at a whopping distance of 400 million km from earth. Named after the Roman god of war, it is also known as the red planet due to the presence of iron oxide in abundance, giving it a reddish appearance.
The Mars mission will cost the government Rs4.5bn, including Rs1.5bn for the spacecraft, Rs1.1bn for the rocket and Rs1.9bn to augment ground stations for operations, including navigation and communications.
“The spacecraft has been built in a record 12 months to orbit elliptically around Mars,” Mars orbiter mission project director S Arunan said.
The 1,340 kg spacecraft (at lift-off) will be shipped to the spaceport on September 27 for integrating it with the 350-tonne rocket, which is an extended version of the space agency’s workhorse, the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-XL).
“The launch date will depend on weather conditions and other parameters during the month-long window we have,” Arunan said.
The orbiter will be in the earth’s orbit for 25 days after launch and fired the next day, to set off on a nine-month voyage to reach Martian orbit by September 21, 2014.
“The spacecraft will be inserted in the earth’s orbit at 248 km and pushed up to 23,000 km over 25 days to set off on a long voyage to enter the Martian orbit over the next nine months next year,” Arunan pointed out.
IANS
