Isro's Mars orbiter Mangalyaan Completes 100 Days in Space

Introduction

Isro's Mars Orbiter spacecraft Mangalyaan successfully completed 100 days in space on Wednesday.

This is the first Indian-made object sent into deep space from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota on November 5 last year.

Since then, the spacecraft is continuously monitored by the ground station of Isro's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), located at Byalalu, near Bangalore.

"The health parameters of all the payloads are normal. Except for a 40-minute break in the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft to the ground station, data has been continuously available till today," said a release from Isro.

Presently, the spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million kilometres causing a one-way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds.

After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million kilometres over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be finally inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24. To reach there, the spacecraft has to still travel 680 million km. As of now it has travelled 190 million kilometres.

Subsequent to six orbit raising manoeuvres around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection (TMI) manoeuvre was done on December 1 giving necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric Orbit.

On December 11, the First Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was also conducted and the trajectory of the spacecraft, till today, is moving as expected. Three more TCM operations have been planned in April, August and September. On February 6, all the five payloads on Mars Orbiter spacecraft were switched on to check their health.

Source

India Brand Equity Foundation, February 13, 2014