This is a post about the two recent space probes that has went to Mars in the past couple of weeks. One is from the United States and the other is from India. Lets analyze both of them. :) India The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan Mars-craft is a spacecraft orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission is a technology demonstrator project to develop the technologies for design, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission.[16] It carries five instruments, one of which, a methane detector, will particularly advance knowledge about Mars.The Mars Orbiter Mission probe lifted-off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (Sriharikota Range SHAR), Andhra Pradesh, using a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25 at 09:08 UTC (14:38 IST) on 5 November 2013.[18] The launch window was approximately 20 days long and started on 28 October 2013. The MOM probe spent about a month in geocentric, low-Earth orbit, where it made a series of seven altitude-raising orbital manoeuvres before trans-Mars injection on 30 November 2013 (UTC). After 298 days transit to Mars, it was successfully inserted into Mars orbit on 24 September 2014. It is Indias first interplanetary mission and ISRO has become the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after the Soviet space program, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It is also the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so. The spacecraft is currently being monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennae at Byalalu. The low cost of the mission was ascribed by Kopillil Radhakrishnan, the chairman of ISRO, to various factors, including a modular approach, a small number of ground tests and long (18-20 hour) working days for scientists. BBCs Jonathan Amos mentioned lower worker costs, home-grown technologies, simpler design, and significantly less complicated payload than NASAs MAVEN. An opinion piece in The Hindu pointed out that the cost was equivalent to less than a single bus ride for each of Indias population of 1.2 billion. Objectives: he primary objective of the Mars Orbiter Mission is to showcase Indias rocket launch systems, spacecraft-building and operations capabilities.[40] Specifically, the primary objective is to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission, comprising the following major tasks: design and realisation of a Mars orbiter with a capability to perform Earth-bound maneuvres, cruise phase of 300 days, Mars orbit insertion / capture, and on-orbit phase around Mars; deep-space communication, navigation, mission planning and management; incorporate autonomous features to handle contingency situations. The secondary objective is to explore Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy and Martian atmosphere using indigenous scientific instruments. United States Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is a space probe designed to study the Martian atmosphere while orbiting Mars. Mission goals include determining how the Martian atmosphere and water, presumed to have once been substantial, were lost over time. MAVEN was successfully launched aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle at the beginning of the first launch window on November 18, 2013. Following the first engine burn of the Centaur second stage, the vehicle coasted in low Earth orbit for 27 minutes before a second Centaur burn of five minutes to insert it into a heliocentric Mars transit orbit. On September 22, 2014, MAVEN reached Mars and was inserted into an areocentric elliptic orbit 6,200 km (3,900 mi) by 150 km (93 mi) above the planets surface. The principal investigator for the spacecraft is Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. The mission was spawned by NASAs Mars Scout Program, which, although discontinued in 2010, yielded Phoenix, MAVEN, and numerous missions studies. Mars Scout missions target a cost of less than US$485 million, not including launch services, which cost approximately $187 million. The total project costs up to $671 million. On September 15, 2008, NASA announced that it had selected MAVEN to be the Mars Scout 2013 mission. There was one other finalist and eight other proposals that were competing against MAVEN. On August 2, 2013, the MAVEN spacecraft arrived at Kennedy Space Center Florida to begin launch preparations. NASA scheduled the launch of MAVEN from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on November 18, 2013, using an Atlas V 401 rocket. The probe arrived in Mars orbit in September 2014, at approximately the same time as Indias Mars Orbiter Mission. On October 1, 2013, only seven weeks before launch, a government shutdown caused suspension of work for two days and initially threatened to force a 26-month postponement of the mission. With the spacecraft nominally scheduled to launch on November 18, a delay beyond December 7 would have caused MAVEN to miss the launch window as Mars moves too far out of alignment with the Earth. However, two days later, a public announcement was made that NASA had deemed the 2013 MAVEN launch so essential to ensuring future communication with current NASA assets on Mars—the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers—that emergency funding was authorized to restart spacecraft processing in preparation for an on-time launch. On September 22, 2014, at approximately 2:24 UTC, MAVEN spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, completing an interplanetary journey of 10 months and 442 million miles (711 million kilometers). Objectives: Features on Mars that resemble dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that form in the presence of water indicate that Mars once had a dense enough atmosphere and was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface. However, that thick atmosphere was somehow lost to space. Scientists suspect that over millions of years, Mars lost 99% of its atmosphere as the planet’s core cooled and its magnetic field decayed, allowing the solar wind to sweep away most of the water and volatile compounds that the atmosphere once contained.[22] The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space, providing answers about Martian climate evolution. By measuring the rate with which the atmosphere is currently escaping to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes, scientists will be able to infer how the planets atmosphere evolved over time. The MAVEN mission has four primary scientific objectives: Determine the role that loss of volatiles to space from the Martian atmosphere has played through time. Determine the current state of the upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the solar wind. Determine the current rates of escape of neutral gases and ions to space and the processes controlling them. Determine the ratios of stable isotopes in the Martian atmosphere. MAVEN reached Mars and successfully maneuvered into orbit around the planet on September 21, 2014. The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on board the Curiosity rover was scheduled to make similar surface measurements from Gale crater by that date. The data from Curiosity will help guide the interpretation of MAVENs upper atmosphere measurements. MAVENs measurements will also provide additional scientific context with which to test models for current methane formation in Mars. SOURCES: Wikipedia ~Herr von Bradford
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 23:53:54 +0000
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