thesolar65
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MAVEN is superior to MOM. While MAVEN is a scientific mission, MOM is just a technology demonstrator
A successful Mars mission in the maiden attempt was a great achievement for India. But for cost-sensitive Indians, the icing on the cake was that it was achieved at the lowest cost (just Rs 450 crore). When Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Indian space scientists had achieved the feat at a cost much lesser than the budget of the Hollywood film Gravity (its budget was about $ 100 million or Rs 600 crore), he was probably speaking the mind of the entire nation.
It was the same nation which had once questioned the need for the Chandrayaan-I mission — detractors felt the government could have utilised the money for welfare purposes instead.
However, the achievement of India's mission was not about the cost. It was about Indian space scientists proving their technological capability of safely placing the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in the Martian orbit.
The c(ISRO) had officially declared the MOM as a "technology demonstrator" (not a scientific mission) to see whether Indian space scientists are able to send an orbiter to Mars, traversing a distance of 65 crore km through space, and then precisely place it in the desired orbit to continue going around the red planet for six months, as the mission entailed.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Indian space scientist said, "People in general believe that ours is a scientific mission. It is not. It is basically a technology mission to demonstrate our own capability of sending an orbiter to Mars and place it in the planned orbit. Then we will wait and see whether it can run that orbit for six months as we hope it would. Our scientific payloads could function only if we reached Mars. And we did. Actually, MAVEN (NASA's orbiter Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, which reached the red planet two days ahead of MOM) is a scientific mission; MOM is just a technology demonstrator."
He said the very name indicates it - Mars Orbiter Mission. "It is to prove - and we did so successfully - that we can achieve the task of sending our own orbiters to Mars."
India's MOM carries a total 12.94 kg of scientific payload, which comprises five different instruments - Mars Colour Camera (MCC) for optical imaging (1.27 kg), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS) for mapping surface composition and mineralogy (3.2 kgs), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) for detecting methane gas in the Martian atmosphere (2.94 kgs), Mars Enospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA) for studying the neutral composition of Martian upper atmosphere (3.56 kgs), and Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP) for studying the escape processes of Martian upper atmosphere through Deuterium/Hydrogen (1.97 kgs).
These will observe Martian surface, atmosphere and exosphere extending up to 80,000 km to understand the evolution of that planet and also to possibly detect methane that is a strong indicator of life existing on that planet.
According to NASA's data, MAVEN's science payload consists of eight instruments in three packages, weighing 65 kg. It will carry the instruments in three packages - the particles and field package, the remote sensing package and the neutral gas and ion mass spectrometer. MAVEN, costing $ 671 million (or Rs 4,026 crore), is designed to orbit Mars for a period of one year to explore how the sun may have stripped the red planet of most of its atmosphere, turning a planet once possibly habitable to microbial life into a cold and barren desert world. MAVEN is the first spacecraft mission dedicated to exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. Probably, all these reasons made a technology manager, Krishna Pillai, write in his blog post, 'K2P blog', in November 2013: "As missions go, MAVEN represents a Mercedes "S" class to the Volkswagen that is MOM."
But then, our scientists achieved what they had sought to achieve and put India in an elite club. For that, they deserve the accolades and be proud of.
Cheapest, yes. But not the best - Bangalore Mirror
A successful Mars mission in the maiden attempt was a great achievement for India. But for cost-sensitive Indians, the icing on the cake was that it was achieved at the lowest cost (just Rs 450 crore). When Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Indian space scientists had achieved the feat at a cost much lesser than the budget of the Hollywood film Gravity (its budget was about $ 100 million or Rs 600 crore), he was probably speaking the mind of the entire nation.
It was the same nation which had once questioned the need for the Chandrayaan-I mission — detractors felt the government could have utilised the money for welfare purposes instead.
However, the achievement of India's mission was not about the cost. It was about Indian space scientists proving their technological capability of safely placing the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in the Martian orbit.
The c(ISRO) had officially declared the MOM as a "technology demonstrator" (not a scientific mission) to see whether Indian space scientists are able to send an orbiter to Mars, traversing a distance of 65 crore km through space, and then precisely place it in the desired orbit to continue going around the red planet for six months, as the mission entailed.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Indian space scientist said, "People in general believe that ours is a scientific mission. It is not. It is basically a technology mission to demonstrate our own capability of sending an orbiter to Mars and place it in the planned orbit. Then we will wait and see whether it can run that orbit for six months as we hope it would. Our scientific payloads could function only if we reached Mars. And we did. Actually, MAVEN (NASA's orbiter Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, which reached the red planet two days ahead of MOM) is a scientific mission; MOM is just a technology demonstrator."
He said the very name indicates it - Mars Orbiter Mission. "It is to prove - and we did so successfully - that we can achieve the task of sending our own orbiters to Mars."
India's MOM carries a total 12.94 kg of scientific payload, which comprises five different instruments - Mars Colour Camera (MCC) for optical imaging (1.27 kg), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS) for mapping surface composition and mineralogy (3.2 kgs), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) for detecting methane gas in the Martian atmosphere (2.94 kgs), Mars Enospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA) for studying the neutral composition of Martian upper atmosphere (3.56 kgs), and Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP) for studying the escape processes of Martian upper atmosphere through Deuterium/Hydrogen (1.97 kgs).
These will observe Martian surface, atmosphere and exosphere extending up to 80,000 km to understand the evolution of that planet and also to possibly detect methane that is a strong indicator of life existing on that planet.
According to NASA's data, MAVEN's science payload consists of eight instruments in three packages, weighing 65 kg. It will carry the instruments in three packages - the particles and field package, the remote sensing package and the neutral gas and ion mass spectrometer. MAVEN, costing $ 671 million (or Rs 4,026 crore), is designed to orbit Mars for a period of one year to explore how the sun may have stripped the red planet of most of its atmosphere, turning a planet once possibly habitable to microbial life into a cold and barren desert world. MAVEN is the first spacecraft mission dedicated to exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. Probably, all these reasons made a technology manager, Krishna Pillai, write in his blog post, 'K2P blog', in November 2013: "As missions go, MAVEN represents a Mercedes "S" class to the Volkswagen that is MOM."
But then, our scientists achieved what they had sought to achieve and put India in an elite club. For that, they deserve the accolades and be proud of.
Cheapest, yes. But not the best - Bangalore Mirror
