Mangalyaan The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is the first Indian mission to Mars.it is designed to study Mars from orbit. The scientific objectives are to explore Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy, and atmosphere. To achieve these objectives, the spacecraft is equipped with five scientific instruments and will nominally spend 6-10 months orbiting and making measurements at Mars. Mission Profile Mangalyaan launched at 09:08 UTC (14:38 IST, 4:08 a.m. EST) on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India. Six burns will raise the apogee of the orbit and the spacecraft will leave Earth orbit and head for Mars on 01 December 2013. After a 300-day cruise an orbital insertion burn on 24 September 2014 will put the spacecraft in an elliptical 76.7-hour Mars orbit, 366 x 80,000 km with an inclination of 150 degrees. The nominal mission is planned for 6-10 months at Mars. The total cost of the mission is about 4.5 billion rupees Spacecraft and Subsystems The Mangalyaan spacecraft is based on a modified IRS/INSAT/Chandrayaan-1 bus. The main body is a roughly 1.5 m cube constructed of aluminum and composite fiber reinforced plastic sandwich material. Total mass is 1,340 kg, of which 852 kg is fuel. A 1.4 x 1.8 m solar array wing consisting of three panels is mounted on one side of the spacecraft. It can generate 800 W power at Mars and charges a 36 amp-hr lithium-ion battery. The bus is built around a 440 N bi-propellant (monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide) thruster and propellant tanks with 390 liter capacity. Attitude control is achieved by four reaction wheels and eight small thrusters, with knowledge provided by two star sensors, a solar panel Sun sensor, and a coarse analog Sun sensor. Communications are via a 2.2 m S-band high gain antenna, a medium gain antenna, and a low gain antenna. The science payload has a total mass of 15 kg and comprises five instruments. The Mars Color Camera, the Lyman Alpha Photometer, the Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, the Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyzer, and the Methane Sensor for Mars. For live tracking of the satellite :- n2yo/?s=39370
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 19:22:39 +0000