American Space Preeminence: Fwd: India puts MOM into Mars orbit

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: September 24, 2014 10:41:40 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: India puts MOM into Mars orbit

Press Trust India
India's Mars mission successful on 1st attempt, history made
Bangalore, Sep 24, 2014, (PTI):
India today created space history by successfully placing its low-cost Mars spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet in its very first attempt, catapulting the country into an elite club of three nations.

Watched by Prime Minister Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ISRO scientists successfully ignited the main 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) and eight small thrusters that fired for 24-minutes from 7.17 AM and slowed down the speed of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft 'Mangalyaan' for it to slip into a smooth orbit around the Red Planet after almost an year-long voyage.

"Today MOM has met Mangal (Mars). Today Mangal has got MOM. The time this mission was short named as MOM, I was sure that MOM won't disappoint us," Modi, who wore a red coloured jacket, said annnouncing the Rs 450 crore mission's success, after nerve-wracking final moments at the command centre of Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) here.

Scientists broke into wild cheers and congratulated each other after the 1,350 kg spacecraft was manoeuvred into its designated place, capping a 666 million km journey that began on November 5 last.

With the success of "Mangalyaan", India has become the first country to go to Mars in the very first try. European, American and Russian probes have managed to orbit or land on the planet, but after several attempts. The first Chinese mission to Mars, called Yinghuo-1, failed in 2011. Earlier in 1998, the Japanese mission ran out of fuel and was lost.

Modi, who witnessed the operation along with the space scientists, said the odds were stacked against "us with only 21 of the 51 missions to Mars being successful," but "we have prevailed."

"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation.
We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few," Modi said in a speech in Hindi and English, congratulating the scientists and "all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion."

An elated Prime Minister patted the back of ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan and complimented the Indian space scientists for making space history.

"I have said it in the past too, the amount our scientists have spent on this mission is even less than what they spend in making Hollywood movies," he said in his address to the mission scientists.

At just 74 million USD, the mission less than the estimated 100 million USD budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity".

India's MOM is the cheapest inter-planetary mission, costing a tenth of NASA's Mars mission Maven that entered the Martian orbit on September 22.

It aims to study Mars' surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, a chemical strongly tied to life on Earth.

Given the high rate of failures --only 21 of the total of 51 missions sent to Mars by various countries being successful, the success of MOM has given a boost to India's global standing in Space.

Copyright 2014, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd., 75, M.G Road, Post Box 5331, Bangalore - 560001

India puts first interplanetary probe in orbit at Mars
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
September 23, 2014

India's first interplanetary mission went into orbit around Mars late Tuesday, vaulting India into rarefied company among the countries that have successfully sent a mission to the red planet.

Artist's concept of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft at Mars. Credit: ISRO

Firing its main engine for 24 minutes, the Indian-built spacecraft autonomously guided itself into orbit around Mars as engineers on Earth watched the probe pass out of communications, a planned loss of signal as it moved behind the red planet.
Right on time at 10:30 p.m. EDT (0230 GMT), officials at the mission's control center in Bangalore broke into applause and leapt from their chairs as telemetry from the spacecraft made it to the ground, confirming it was in orbit.
"India has successfully reached Mars!" declared Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who watched the event from an observation gallery at the Bangalore control center.
The Mars mission makes India the fourth entity to put a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, following the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency.
"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and imagination," Modi said. "We have accurately navigated our spacecraft on a route known to very few, and we have done it from a distance so large that it took a command signal from us to reach it more than it takes sunlight to reach us."
The Mars Orbiter Mission -- known as MOM -- closed in on Mars after a journey of 414 million miles since it departed Earth in November 2013 after blasting off on India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
Mission control received signals from the MOM spacecraft 12 minutes after the probe sent the updates, the time it takes for light waves to travel the gulf of 139 million miles separating Earth and Mars.
The probe's main engine was supposed to slow down the MOM spacecraft by 2,457 mph, enough for Martian gravity to pull the satellite into orbit.
An update posted on the Indian Space Research Organization's Facebook page said data from the craft indicated it performed the burn exactly as planned.
"History has been created today," Modi said in remarks to the ISRO control team. "We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near-impossible. I congratulate all ISRO scientists as well as all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion."
The Mars Orbiter Mission was supposed to spiral into an orbit with a high point nearly 50,000 miles from Mars. On the orbit's closest approach to the red planet, the MOM spacecraft would fly at an altitude of just 263 miles.
The solar-powered spacecraft -- about the size of a compact car -- joins six other missions operating at Mars.
NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers are wheeling across the red planet's dusty surface, and the U.S. space agency has three orbiters flying above Mars -- Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the MAVEN atmospheric research craft.
Europe's Mars Express mission has circled Mars since December 2003.
"ISRO joins a elite group of only three other agencies worldwide to have successfully reached the red planet," Modi said. "India, in fact, is the only country to have succeeded in its very first attempt. We put together the spacecraft in record time, within a mere three years from first studying its feasibility."
More than half of the world's attempts to send a craft to Mars have failed, including Russia's most recent Mars mission in 2011 and Japan's Nozomi spacecraft, which missed a chance to enter orbit at Mars in 1999.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided communications and navigation support to mission controllers in India.
Scientists built five research instruments to fly to Mars on the Indian orbiter, which officials said is primarily a technology demonstration mission.
Now that the spacecraft is in orbit at Mars, attention will turn toward scientific observations.
The mission carries about 33 pounds, or 15 kilograms, of scientific instrumentation to gather data on the history of the Martian climate and the mineral make-up of its surface.
The mission carries a color imaging camera to return medium-resolution pictures of the Martian surface, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of rocks and soils, and instruments to assess the Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector.
Scientific assessments of methane in the Martian atmosphere have returned mixed results.
Methane is a potential indicator of current microbial life on Mars, but some types of geologic activity can also produce trace levels of the gas.
Modi said India developed the $72 million Mars Orbiter Mission at about one-tenth the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN mission, which completed its journey to the red planet with a flawless orbit insertion burn Sunday night.
India's low-budget Mars mission cost less than many Hollywood films, Modi said, using the project as a demonstration of the Indian space program's record of success despite modest means.
"Indians are a proud people," Modi said. "Despite our many limitations, we aspire to success. The success of our space program is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation. Our spacecraft has been an example of achievement. It inspires the rest of us to strive for excellence ourselves."
India's space program primarily focuses on funding satellites with earthly applications, such as launch vehicles and satellites for communications, navigation, and climate research.
The Mars Orbiter Mission is ISRO's second space exploration project, after the Chandrayaan 1 probe launched into orbit around the moon in 2008.
India does not have another Mars probe in its plans, but engineers are working on a lunar rover mission.

© 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.

India triumphs in maiden Mars mission, sets record in space race
By Aditya Kalra

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Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientists and engineers watch Prime Minister Narendra Modi …

by Aditya Kalra
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's low-cost mission to Mars successfully entered the red planet's orbit on Wednesday, crowning what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said was a "near impossible" push to become the only country to complete the trip on its maiden attempt.
The Mars Orbiter Mission was achieved on a budget of $74 million, nearly a tenth of the amount the U.S. space agency NASA spent on sending the Maven spacecraft to Mars.
"History has been created today," said Modi, who burst into applause along with hundreds of scientists at the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) when it was announced the mission had been accomplished.
"We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible," said Modi, wearing a red waistcoat at the space command centre in the southern city of Bangalore.
India joins the United States, Russia and Europe in successfully sending probes to orbit or land on Mars. Apart from India, none managed to succeed on their first attempt.
The mission also makes India the first country in Asia to reach Mars, after an attempt by regional rival China failed to leave Earth's orbit in 2011.
ISRO successfully ignited the main 440 Newton liquid engine and eight small thrusters that fired for 24-minutes and trimmed the speed of the craft to allow smooth orbit. A confirmation of orbit entry was received at around 8 a.m. India time (0230 GMT).
After completing the 666 million km (414 million miles) journey in more than 10 months, the spacecraft called Mangalyaan
meaning Mars craft in Hindi - will now study the red planet's surface and scan its atmosphere for chemical methane. It will not land on Mars.
ISRO scientists will operate five scientific instruments on the spacecraft to gather data, the space agency's scientific secretary V. Koteswara Rao told Reuters.
The expected life of the craft is six months, after which it will run out of fuel and the agency will not be able to maintain its orbit.
Modi has said he wants to expand the country's five-decade-old space programme. The technological triumph is fortuitously timed for him - he will be able to flaunt the achievement on a trip to the United States starting on Friday.
Modi also holds the additional charge as India's minister of space, and has endorsed the low-cost of the project, saying it cost even less than the budget of 'Gravity'. The Hollywood blockbuster cost about $100 million to make.
NASA, which helped India with communications on the mission, congratulated ISRO. The Mangalyaan and the NASA's Maven, built at a cost of $671 million, are simultaneously orbiting the red planet.
INDIA IN SPACE VS OTHERS
India's space programme was launched in the early 1960s and the country developed its own rocket technology after Western powers imposed sanctions for a nuclear weapons test in 1974.
Still, the country remains a small player in the global space industry that grew to $314 billion in revenues and government budgets in 2013, according to Colorado-based Space Foundation.
Experts say Mars mission success can help change that.
"ISRO will now hopefully attract a lot of business," said Mayank N. Vahia, a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. "We will now attract more international attention and international trade for satellites."
Two-thirds of the craft's parts were made by Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro LART.NS and Godrej & Boyce.
With 30 Indian and 40 foreign satellite launches so far, its nearest cheap competition would be China, which is armed with bigger space launchers. ISRO signed an agreement with China National Space Administration on Friday to cooperate in research and development of various satellites.
Despite its success, India faces criticism for spending on space research as millions go hungry.
(Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy in MUMBAI and Andrew MacAskill in NEW DELHI; Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Frank Jack Daniel)

Copyright © 2014 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

India successfully puts spacecraft in Mars' orbit
By KATY DAIGLE

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NEW DELHI (AP) — India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday morning and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers.
Scientists broke into wild cheers as the orbiter's engines completed 24 minutes of burn time to maneuver the spacecraft into its designated place around the red planet.
"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, standing alongside scientists with the Indian Space and Research Organisation at the command center in the southern tech hub of Bangalore.
"We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few," Modi said, congratulating the scientists and "all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion."
Scientists described the final stages of the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, as flawless. The success marks a milestone for the space program in demonstrating that it can conduct complex missions and act as a global launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites.
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It's also a major feat for the developing country of 1.2 billion people, most of whom are poor. At the same time, India has a robust scientific and technical educational system that has produced millions of software programmers, engineers and doctors, propelling many into the middle class.
Getting a spaceship successfully into orbit around Mars is no easy task. More than half the world's previous attempts — 23 out of 41 missions — have failed, including one by Japan in 1999.
The United States had its first success with a 1964 flyby by a spacecraft called Mariner 4, returning 21 images of the surface of the planet. The former Soviet Union reached the planet in 1971, and the European Space Agency in 2003.
The U.S. space agency NASA congratulated India in a Twitter message welcoming MOM to studying the red planet.
On Sunday, NASA achieved its own success in placing its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or Maven, in position. The U.S. has two more satellites circling the planet at the moment, as well as two rovers rolling across the rocky Martian surface. The European Space Agency's Mars Express, launched over a decade ago, is still operating as well.
India was particularly proud that MOM was developed with homegrown technology and for a bargain price of about $75 million — a cost that Modi quipped was lower than many Hollywood film budgets. By comparison, NASA's much larger Maven mission cost nearly 10 times as much at $671 million.
India's 1,350-kilogram (nearly 3,000-pound) orbiter will now circle the planet for at least six months, with five solar-powered instruments gathering scientific data that may shed light on Martian weather systems as well as what happened to the water that is believed to have existed once on Mars in large quantities.
It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes. None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist
India wanted the spacecraft — also called Mangalyaan, meaning "Mars craft" in Hindi —to show the world its ability to design, plan, manage and operate a difficult, deep-space mission. India has already conducted dozens of successful satellite launches, including sending up the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which discovered key evidence of water on the Moon in 2008.
The country's space scientists are already planning new missions, including putting a rover on the Moon. But space agency chief K. Radhakrishnan said their main focus would be to continue developing technologies for commercial and navigational satellite applications.

Copyright © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Mission accomplished: India joins Mars explorers
By KATY DAIGLE

Reuters Videos
India triumphs in maiden Mars mission
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NEW DELHI (AP) — India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers.
In scenes broadcast live on Indian TV, scientists broke into wild cheers as the orbiter's engines completed 24 minutes of burn time to maneuver the spacecraft into its designated place around the red planet.
"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a live broadcast from the Indian Space and Research Organisation's command center in the southern tech hub of Bangalore.
"We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few," Modi said, congratulating the scientists and "all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion."
Scientists described the final stages of the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, as flawless. The success marks a milestone for the space program in demonstrating that it can conduct complex missions and act as a global launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites.
Reaching the fourth planet from the sun is a major feat for the developing country of 1.2 billion people, most of whom are poor. At the same time, India has a robust scientific and technical educational system that has produced millions of software programmers, engineers and doctors.
India describes MOM as the first successful Mars mission on a maiden attempt by any country, although the European Space Agency, a consortium of several nations, also did it on its first Mars mission in 2003.
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Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientists and engineers cheer after India's Mars orbiter …
Rival China is also expanding its space exploration program with a space lab that is in orbit before a future permanent space station is established. It also landed a rover on the moon late last year, but has not sent a satellite to Mars.
Astronomy students who gathered at the Nehru Planetarium in New Delhi for Mars-themed learning activities and games were elated by the mission's success.
"I am proud to be born in a country that can do anything and succeed," said Kashish, 12, who uses only one name.
Another 12-year-old, Mansha Khanna, said she was so inspired she wanted to become "a scientist or an astronaut, and do research about other planets."
Getting a spaceship successfully into orbit around Mars is no easy task. More than half the world's previous attempts — 23 out of 41 missions — have failed. India wanted this spacecraft, also called Mangalyaan, meaning "Mars craft" in Hindi, to be a global advertisement for its ability in designing, planning and managing a difficult, deep-space mission.
India has already conducted dozens of successful satellite launches, including sending up the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which discovered key evidence of water on the moon in 2008. And it plans new scientific missions, including putting a rover on the moon.
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School students light firecrackers as they hold placards to celebrate after India's Mars Orbiter suc …
But India "is likely to be somewhat limited because we can't afford to spend that much money in pure science exploration and in an exercise of the imagination," said D. Raghunandan of the Delhi Science Forum, a group that promotes the study of science.
The space agency's focus will remain on developing technologies for commercial and navigational satellite applications — services that could bring in significant revenues from companies or governments seeking to place their own satellites or research equipment in space.
"If we're going to earn money, we're going to do it on that," Raghunandan said.
U.S. space agency NASA, which has conducted 15 successful missions to Mars, including a spacecraft that arrived in orbit on Sunday, congratulated India in a Twitter message welcoming MOM to studying the red planet.
India's 1,350-kilogram (nearly 3,000-pound) orbiter will now circle the planet for at least six months, with solar-powered instruments gathering scientific data that may shed light on Martian weather systems as well as what happened to the water that is believed to have existed once on Mars.
It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes. None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form and what conditions might make life possible.
View gallery

Visitors look at a scale model of India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft at the Nehru Planetarium in Bangal …
"It's yet another source of information. Mars is gradually unveiling its secrets to science and humanity, and the Indian mission is yet another means of unveiling this enigma that Mars presents," said space expert Roger Franzen, the technical program manager at the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Scientists said it was helpful that MOM's data will reflect the same time period as data being collected by NASA's newest Maven mission, allowing the two data sets to be compared for better understanding.
The U.S. has two more satellites circling the planet at the moment, as well as two rovers rolling across the rocky Martian surface.
India was particularly proud that MOM was developed with homegrown technology and for a bargain price of about $75 million — a cost that Modi quipped was lower than many Hollywood movie budgets. NASA's much larger Maven mission cost nearly 10 times as much, at $671 million.
"Today not only has a dream come true, but we have created history for India, for ISRO, and for the world," said Vipparthi Adimurthy of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.
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AP writers Nirmala George in New Delhi and Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.
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Copyright © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

India wins Asia's race to Mars as spacecraft enters orbit
By Gulab Chand
India won Asia's race to Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit after a 10-month journey on a tiny budget.
Scientists at mission control let out wild cheers and applause after the gold-coloured craft fired its main engine and slipped into the planet's orbit following a 660-million kilometre (410-million mile) voyage.
"History has been created. We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near impossible," a jubilant Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) base near Bangalore.
"The success of our space programme is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation," Modi said, grinning broadly and embracing the ISRO's chairman.The success of the mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with its Asian rivals for success in space.
Indians from ministers to students and office workers took to Twitter to express pride, with the Hindi slogan "JaiHind" or "Hail India" trending on the microblogging site.
"Emotional & proud day for ISRO & all Indians as we have achieved this feat in first attempt!" Bollywood director Madhur Bhandarkar said.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen on a screen as he greets scientists In Bangalore alongsi …
India has been trying to keep up with neighbouring giant China, which has poured billions of dollars into its programme and plans to build a manned space station by the end of the decade.
At just $74 million, the mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity".
It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.
India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars. More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.
No single nation had previously succeeded at its first go, although the European Space Agency, which represents a consortium of countries, pulled off the feat at its first attempt.
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The PSLV-C25 launch vehicle carrying the Mars Orbiter probe as its payload lifts off from the Satish …
- NASA sends congratulations -
Scientists announced at 8:02am (0232 GMT) that Mangalyaan had entered the orbit. Now the probe is expected to study the planet's surface and scan its atmosphere for methane, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form.
Mangalyaan is carrying a camera, an imaging spectrometer, a methane sensor and two other scientific instruments.
NASA congratulated India on its "Mars arrival", welcoming Mangalyaan, which means Mars vehicle in Hindi, in a tweet to "the missions studying the Red Planet".
Indian engineers employed an unusual "slingshot" method for Mangalyaan's voyage, which began when it blasted off from India's southern spaceport on November 5 last year.
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Visitors look at a scale model of India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft at the Nehru Planetarium in Bangal …
Lacking enough rocket power to blast directly out of Earth's atmosphere and gravitational pull, it orbited the Earth for several weeks while building up enough velocity to break free.
Critics of the programme say a country that struggles to feed its people adequately and where roughly half have no toilets should not be splurging on space travel.
But supporters say it is the perfect opportunity to showcase India's technological prowess as well as a chance for some one-upmanship on its rival Asian superpower.
"It's a low-cost technology demonstration," said Pallava Bagla, who has written a book on India's space programme.
"The rivalry between regional giants China and India exists in space too and this gives India the opportunity to inch ahead of China (and capture more of the market)," Bagla told AFP.
China offered its congratulations. "This is the pride of India, the pride of Asia, and is a landmark of the progress of humankind's exploration in outer space," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a daily briefing.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh announced the mission launch in a speech on Independence Day 2012, shortly after China's attempt flopped when it failed to leave Earth's atmosphere.
India has launched 40 satellites for foreign nations since kick-starting its space programme five decades ago. But China launches bigger satellites.
ISRO scientists said the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, had "proved" India's "technological capabilities" and showed it was capable of venturing further.
"MOM is a major step towards our future missions in inter-planetary space," ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters.
The probe is expected to circle Mars for six months, about 500 kilometres from its surface, and send data back to Earth.

Copyright © 2014 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

India's First Mars Probe Makes Historic Red Planet Arrival
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer | September 23, 2014 10:15pm ET

Artist's concept of India's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, which arrived at the Red Planet on Sept. 24, 2014 Indian Standard Time (Sept. 23 EDT).
Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation View full size image
India has joined the Mars club.
India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) probe was captured by the Red Planet's gravity around 10:11 p.m. EDT Tuesday (Sept. 23; 0211 GMT and 7:41 a.m. Indian Standard Time on Wednesday, Sept. 24), making India's space agency just the fourth entity — after the United States, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union — to successfully place a spacecraft in Mars orbit.
The MOM probe, which is named Mangalyaan (Sanskrit for "Mars Craft"), executed a 24-minute orbital insertion burn Tuesday night, ending a 10-month space journey that began with the spacecraft's launch on Nov. 5, 2013. [India's First Mars Mission in Pictures (Gallery)]
"What is red, is a planet and is the focus of my orbit?" officials with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said via Twitter Tuesday night, in a playful announcement of the orbital-insertion success.
After a 300-day cruise through space, India's Mars probe will circle the planet.
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist
View full size image
MOM's historic arrival at Mars comes just two days after NASA's MAVEN spacecraft reached the Red Planet, which now hosts five operational orbiters as well as two working surface craft — NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.
The $74 million MOM mission is mainly a technology demonstration, designed to show that India can indeed get a spacecraft to Mars. But the probe also totes a camera and four scientific instruments, which the craft will use to study the planet's surface and atmosphere.
For example, MOM will search for methane, a key target for researchers hunting for signs of life on Mars. Living things produce more than 90 percent of the methane in Earth's atmosphere. And the gas is thought to disappear relatively quickly from Mars' air, meaning that any methane spotted there would have been produced recently.
MOM's mission design calls for a highly elliptical, 77-hour orbit that will bring Mangalyaan as close as 227 miles (365 kilometers) to Mars and take the probe as far away as 49,710 miles (80,000 km) from the planet. MOM's science mission should last between six and 10 months, ISRO officials have said.
MAVEN, whose name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, aims to help scientists figure out how and why the Red Planet's climate shifted as dramatically as it did in the past. Billions of years ago, Mars was a warm and wet world capable of supporting microbial life, but today it's a cold and dry place whose surface appears inhospitable.
MAVEN will use its three suites of scientific instruments to study Mars' upper atmosphere, measuring the rates of gas escape into space. Mission team members have said they hope the probe's observations shed light on how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere, which was once relatively thick but is now just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth at sea level.
The other three operational spacecraft currently circling the Red Planet are NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, along with Europe's Mars Express probe.

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