India's Mars Mission

Introduction : 

India’s first interplanetary probe, the Mars Orbiter Mission, has left home on the first leg of a voyage of scientific discovery. Once again, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation performed its task with impeccable ease.

Facts : 

• ISRO’s next focus is Chandrayaan 2 and GSLV
• Mars orbiter mission would continue till 2015.
• India's Mars orbiter will travel 300 days through space to reach the orbit of Mars

Journey : 

A long and difficult trek now lies ahead of the spacecraft. It will circle Earth for the rest of this month, repeatedly firing an onboard liquid-propellant engine to gain velocity. Shortly after
midnight on November 30, the engine will fire again to put it on course for the Red Planet, a journey of 680 million kilometres that will take almost 300 days to complete.

Comparison : 

 Only the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Europe have succeeded in getting spacecraft to the fourth planet from the Sun. Japan, a nation whose space programme began well before India’s and which has rich experience in a variety of space missions, ran into problems that ultimately crippled its maiden Martian venture launched in 1998. The Nozomi spacecraft’s propulsion system malfunctioned and then powerful solar flares seriously damaged key components. The probe ended up shooting past Mars, instead of going into orbit around it. China tried to hitch a ride for its Yinghuo-1 spacecraft on Russia’s Phobos-Grunt. But the latter was unable to leave Earth orbit and burnt up as it fell to the ground early last year in Nov 2011

Critisism & Defence :

Looking at the country’s state of abject poverty, malnutrition and underdevelopment, some have questioned the profligacy of India heading to the Red Planet on a mission that costs Rs.450 crore. 

Later this month, India will send a 1,350-kg unmanned satellite aptly called “Mangalyaan” which means “Mars craft” made by a team of 500 scientists from ISRO in a record 15 months, the shortest time frame for any of the over 100 space missions India has ever undertaken.

In a manner that has similarities with the clarion call given by John F. Kennedy in 1961 that Americans will land on the moon, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2012, described the Mangalyaan mission as a “huge step for us,” proclaiming that “our craft will soon go to Mars and collect important scientific information.” Since 1960, about 45 missions to Mars have been launched with a third having ended in disaster and no single nation succeeding in its maiden venture.

Science and Cyclones

To some diehard critics of the Indian Mars mission, the recent Phailin cyclone in Odisha should be an eye-opener, where the loss of life was a mere 44. In comparison, about 10,000 people lost their lives in the supercyclone of 1999 and 3,00,000 people died in the Sunderbans and Bangladesh in the Bhola Cyclone of 1970. The crucial difference now is that India today had as many as half-a-dozen satellites, all made by ISRO, keeping a constant vigil on the cyclone as it roared over the Bay of Bengal, while the string of Doppler Radars that line the coast along the Bay of Bengal also helped.