Mangalyaan

Much has been said about India's first ever mission to the most mysterious planet, yeah the red planet-Mars. But we Indians who have been busy moaning about the onion price rise and then in kind of a Diwali hangover, are we really interested to know that exactly what this mission all about?

The first question that might come to a common Indian's mind is that, "Why are we wasting so much of our money on a Space mission when our country is struggling to feed the poor and we are still labelled as "The third world" ?
Here is the simplest answer,

We always want short term benefits, but here it is not the case. Some of you might be very well knowing that last year NASA launched its super hi-tech "Curiosity" space rover on to the Martian surface. They have already conducted ample of researches. Here it isn't a race to see who first reaches the red planet. But we need to think that if after 2-3 decades when there will be ample Manned Mars missions and when the martian surface will be distributed amongst countries, our country can stake a claim because we too have been the early visitors upon the Mars land. This is the very reason why this hullabo is all about. There are many things we need to consider while taking such a giant leap. Even as we know the Chandrayan was successful in finding the traces of ice on the moon, similarly our Mangalyaan will be looking for traces on Methane on the Martian surface. Lets hope it is successful and it gives us yet another proud moment as Indians.

Launch time:
The Mangalyaan(PSLV-XL C25-Name of the rocket carrying Mangalyaan) is slated to be launched at 2.38 P.M(IST) on November 5,2013.
The ambitious ₹450 Crore project by the Indian Space Research Organization will be marching towards the red planet from Sriharikota and will keep orbiting around the earth before it gathers velocity to storm towards Mars.

Duration of operation:
The 1,350-kilogram unmanned orbiter must travel 485 million miles over 300 days to reach the red planet next September.
Firstly it will orbit our earth for nearly a month before it sets off for the Red planet.
The golden coloured Indian scientific wonder is expected to work around Mars for almost 6 months.

What to expect from Mangalyaan?
The biggest question that arises is that what shall we expect from this over 4 billion Rupees project,but the answers are quite simple


1.Orbit manoeuvres to transfer the probe from Earth-centered orbit to heliocentric trajectory and finally capture into Martian orbit.


2.Development of force models and algorithms for orbit and attitude computations and analyses.


3.Navigation in all phases.


4.Maintain the probe in all phases of the mission meeting power, communications, thermal and payload operation requirements.


5.Incorporate autonomous features to handle contingency situations.


6.Search the traces of Methane.


7.Find other possibilities for living beings to exist.


And the biggest reason as I mentioned earlier is undoubtedly of showing off that our country too can go and meet the mysterious Mars.
If successful, this Mars Orbiter Mission will be a giant leap for India in the Astronomical world as well as the current cold war politics.

Being a Science fanatic and a proud Indian all that I would like to say to our very own Mars Orbiter satellite will be
"Aapki yatra Mangalmay ho!!!"





The Mangalyaan has finally launched

You can follow the live feed over here

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/pslv/c25/status.html