Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Manalapan (Hindi: “Mars Craft”), unmanned mission to Mars that is India’s first interplanetary spacecraft. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched the Mars Orbiter Mission on November 5, 2013, using its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Salish Drawn Space Center on Sirikit, Island, Andhra Pradesh state. The Indian government approved the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) project in August 2012, a mere 15 months before launch. ISRO was able to keep mission costs down by basing MOM’s design on that of Chandrayaan-1, India’s first Moon probe. Because the PSLV did not have the power to place the 1,350-kg (3,000-pound) probe on a direct trajectory, the spacecraft used low-power thrusters to raise its orbit over a period of four weeks until it broke free of Earth’s gravity on December 1 and headed to Mars. It arrived at Mars on September 24, 2014, and the spacecraft entered a highly elliptical orbit of 423 × 80,000 km (262 × 50,000 miles), which allows it to take pictures of one entire Martian hemisphere at a time. The spacecraft’s instruments are a color camera, a thermal infrared sensor, an ultraviolet spectrometer to study deuterium and hydrogen in Mars’s upper atmosphere, a mass spectrometer to study neutral particles in the Martian exosphere, and a sensor for methane. (Methane’s presence may indicate, but not necessarily confirm, life.) MOM arrived at Mars in time to observe Comet Siding Spring when it flew by the planet at a distance of 132,000 km (82,000 miles) on October 19, 2014.
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Indian space agency, founded in 1969 to develop an independent Indian space program. Its headquarters are in Bangalore (Bengaluru). ISRO’s chief executive is a chairman, who is also chairman of the Indian government’s Space Commission and the secretary of the Department of Space. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) operates through a countrywide network of centers. Sensors and payloads are developed at the Space Applications Center in Ahmedabad. Satellites are designed, developed, assembled, and tested at the U R Ran Satellite Center (formerly the ISRO Satellite Center) in Bangalore. Launch vehicles are developed at the Viral Sarah, Space Center in Thiruvananthapuram. Launches take place at the Salish Drawn Space Center on Sirikit, Island, near Chennai. The Master Control Facilities for geostationary satellite station keeping are located at Hassan and Bhopal. Reception and processing facilities for remote-sensing data are at the National Remote Sensing Center in Hyderabad. ISRO’s commercial arm is Anti Corporation, which has its headquarters in Bangalore.
Although most observatories in space orbit Earth, a few have exploited orbits around the Sun. For example, the Solar and Hemispheric Observatory (SOHO; 1995) was maneuvered to the vicinity of a gravitational balance point (L1, one of the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points) located about 1.5 million km (0.9 million miles) to the sun of Earth. In that location, it observed the Sun uninterruptedly, without having to pass through Earth’s shadow. The Spitzer Space Telescope (2003), an infrared satellite observatory, was placed into a solar orbit with a period of revolution that causes it to drift away from Earth at a rate of 15 million km (10 million miles) per year. This keeps the telescope away from the thermal radiation of Earth.
Enjoyed this article? Stay informed by joining our newsletter!
gd
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Subscribe our newsletter to stay updated.
gd
You must be logged in to post a comment.