Isro plans Venus mission, wants to revisit Red planet

[anant_s]

Isro plans Venus mission, wants to revisit Red planet

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, before its launch at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota (Reuters File Photo for representation only)

Highlights

• In a first, Isro will launch 104 satellites in one go
• The mission to Mars - tentatively slated for 2021-22, may well involve putting a robot on the Martian surface.
• India’s mission to Venus is in all probability going to be a modest orbiter mission.

BENGALURU/MUMBAi: India plans to go to Venus for the first time and revisit the red planet, Mars, very soon.

A formal acknowledgement of these two bold inter-planetary sojourns+ by the government is in the electronic budget documents.

The news comes ahead of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) attempting its mega launch this week+ when it will place 104 satellites in space in a single launch by its workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). No other country has ever tried to hit a century in a single mission.

Russia holds the current record of 37 satellites. The mission, set for February 15, has another significance.

It will bring arch-rivals Israel and the Arab world together in single launch for the first time. An Isro official told TOI on Tuesday that the 104 satellites include one from Israel and another from Dubai.

"The last satellite included was from a private firm in Dubai and is a nano satellite. It is significant that we have brought together Israel and the Arab world,'' he said.

In the 2017 budget, funds for the department of space have been increased by 23%. Under the space sciences section, the Budget mentions provisions "for Mars Orbiter Mission II and mission to Venus".

The mission to Mars is tentatively slated for 2021-22 and as per existing plans it may well involve putting a robot on the Martian surface.

While India's first Mars mission+ in 2013 was purely indigenous, the French space agency wants to collaborate in making the Mars rover.

India's maiden mission to Venus is in all probability going to be a modest orbiter mission. Of the 104 satellites to be launched by Isro+ on Wednesday, the largest chunk of 88 is from the US. The satellites are from a single American organisation, Planet, located in California.

The other foreign satellites are from Kazakhstan, the Netherlands and Switzerland. There are only three Indian satellites — Cartosat 2 and two Indian nano satellites. A majority of the satellites are for earth imaging.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...o-revisit-red-planet/articleshow/57115850.cms

 

[anant_s]

ISRO Plans Return to Mars with Mangalyaan 2.0

The next Mars mission will likely be launched in March 2018, have a less elliptical orbit around the red planet and could weigh seven times more than the first mission.

An image of Mars taken by the Colour Camera onboard MOM-1 from a height of 8,449 km. Credit: ISRO

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) wants to return to Mars with a second Mars Orbiter Mission. It has published an ‘announcement of opportunity’ on its website soliciting proposals from institutions around India of the scientific studies that the orbiter could undertake. The mission will likely be launched in March 2018, when Earth and Mars become optimally aligned again in their orbits around the Sun for a craft to journey between them using a fuel-saving manoeuvre. However, no date has been officially announced.

The following is an annotation of the announcement with the relevant details.

The geomorphological features on Mars suggests an early warm and wet climate, and perhaps conducive to the emergence of primitive life. Mars is considered to be unique as it has experienced processes similar to that existing on Earth during formation and its evolution. Recent discoveries have revealed that Mars possesses a record of diverse surfaces created as a result of geological processes occurring prior to 3 [billion years], and recent volcanism, weathering events during the last few 100 million years. This complete geological record is yet to be found on Moon or the Earth, and therefore new Mars missions provide an opportunity to address questions regarding planetary evolutionary processes, how and whether life arose elsewhere in the solar system, and the interplay between geological and possible biological history.

Previous orbiter and rover missions to Mars have provided direct evidence for the presence of hydrated minerals on the exposed surface and the presence of water ice at sub-surface regions. Existence of methane has been proposed from a few limited ground based and space based observations, but these are yet to be confirmed unambiguously.

ISRO’s first MOM (MOM-1), which got into orbit around Mars in September 2014, has been looking for signs of atmospheric methane while studying surface features – just like the NASA MAVEN mission that started operating around the same time. Methane is considered a biomarker: a substance whose presence indicates the current or historical presence of life. The American space agency’s Curiosity rover on the Martian surface has also been analysing minerals and dust, looking for signs of water as well as other biomarkers. These explorers will soon be joined by the Euro-Russian ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a satellite en route to Mars and which will closely study Mars’s atmospheric composition once it gets there.

The understanding of the [evolution over time] of the Martian atmosphere necessitates new measurements to quantify the loss of atmospheric water and carbon dioxide.

This loss has been driven by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles emerging from the Sun. As the particles flow past Mars’s atmosphere, they excite charged particles, which then get accelerated and shot into space. The NASA MAVEN mission has measured this rate to be 100 grams per second.

One key finding revealed today is that the solar wind strips gas from #Mars at about 100 grams (~1/4 lb) per second. pic.twitter.com/VOjMSTY4mZ

— NASA's MAVEN Mission (@MAVEN2Mars) November 5, 2015

Future Mars missions are focusing on in situ surface/subsurface probing by landers and rovers, with orbiters continuing studies of Martian surface and sub-surface and also serving as continued communication link to Earth. An orbiter mission with focused science objectives can provide valuable global Mars science.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has successfully demonstrated India’s technological capability for interplanetary exploration.

This was actually the mission’s primary objective. Studying the planet using its payload of scientific instruments was the secondary mission.

MOM carries five scientific payloads to study the Martian surface features, morphology, mineralogy and Martian atmosphere. Analysis of MOM data is under progress.

The last line is particularly relevant: since September 2014, only a few scientific studies based on MOM’s findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals. While ISRO releases a squirt of photos taken by the orbiter of the red planet every now and then, information of no other discoveries – if any – is yet available in the public domain.

While it is commendable that the space organisation is doing what needs to be done to continue the Indian scientific community’s contribution to the interesting-as-ever study of Mars, the announcement for a MOM-2 is also important for what it says about the relevance of MOM-1’s findings. As mentioned earlier, MOM-1 was primarily a technology demonstrator while the science was secondary, so the delay in publishing results is not that acutely felt. MOM-2 won’t have this leeway.

In fact, the sooner some results are available, the easier it will be for ISRO to make decisions about future missions, their scientific agenda and payloads and, overall, the problems that the space organisation will be uniquely positioned to tackle in the longer term.

It is now planned to have the next orbiter mission around Mars for a future launch opportunity. Proposals are solicited from interested scientists within India for experiments onboard an orbiter mission around Mars (MOM-2), to address relevant scientific problems and topics.

The last date to submit proposals is September 6, 2016. The Hindu reported that a “total picture of the mission” will likely be available closer to the presentation of the 2017 union budget.

This “Announcement of Opportunity (AO)” is addressed to all institutions in India currently involved in planetary exploration studies/the development of science instruments for space. This orbiter mission will facilitate scientific community to address the open science problems. The Principal Investigator of the proposal should be (i) able to provide necessary details of the instrument which can address the scientific problems and (ii) capable to bring together the instrument team and lead the team for developing a space qualified instrument.

The payload capability of the proposed satellite is likely to be 100kg…

To compare, MOM-1’s payload of instruments weighed a grand total of about 14 kg. So a 100-kilogram’s worth of instruments will well-widen the scope of studies and quality of observations that MOM-2 will be able to undertake. A flipside is that launching a 100-kg satellite will require ISRO to use the heavier GSLV rocket – and the GSLV rockets haven’t yet proved themselves reliable, nowhere near as reliable as the PSLV-class rocket that launched MOM-1. So ISRO will also have to focus on getting a reliable GSLV rocket in place.

… and 100W.

This is an oddity. MOM-1 was equipped with three power panels generating a total of 840 watts to power its instruments. MOM-2 should have a power supply of at least 1,000 watts. The ‘100W’ mentioned in the announcement is thought to be a typo.

However final values are to be tuned based on the final configuration. The apoarion of the orbit is expected to be around 5000 km.

The apoareaon is the highest point of an orbit around Mars. MOM-1, which is in a highly elliptical orbit, currently has an apoareon of ~77,000 km. An apoareon of 5,000 km for MOM-2 implies a much more circular orbit, in turn setting the context in which prospective investigators can think about what kind of science can be done.

Note: This article earlier stated that only one study based on MOM’s observations has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It has been corrected to say a “few studies”.

https://thewire.in/58415/mars-orbiter-isro-planetary/

 

[anant_s]

Few pictures from Mangalyaan mission

@Levina @nair @MilSpec @WAJsal @Robinhood Pandey @danger007 @XiNiX @Vergennes

 

[anant_s]

Mars Orbiter Mission Profile

1. Geo Centric Phase
The spacecraft is injected into an Elliptic Parking Orbit by the launcher. With six main engine burns, the spacecraft is gradually maneuvered into a departure hyperbolic trajectory with which it escapes from the Earth’s Sphere of Influence (SOI) with Earth’s orbital velocity + V boost. The SOI of earth ends at 918347 km from the surface of the earth beyond which the perturbing force on the orbiter is mainly due to the Sun. One primary concern is how to get the spacecraft to Mars, on the least amount of fuel. ISRO uses a method of travel called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit – or a Minimum Energy Transfer Orbit – to send a spacecraft from Earth to Mars with the least amount of fuel possible.

2. Helio Centric Phase
The spacecraft leaves Earth in a direction tangential to Earth’s orbit and encounters Mars tangentially to its orbit. The flight path is roughly one half of an ellipse around sun. Eventually it will intersect the orbit of Mars at the exact moment when Mars is there too. This trajectory becomes possible with certain allowances when the relative position of Earth, Mars and Sun form an angle of approximately 44o. Such an arrangement recur periodically at intervals of about 780 days. Minimum energy opportunities for Earth-Mars occur in November 2013, January 2016, May2018 etc.

3. Martian Phase
The spacecraft arrives at the Mars Sphere of Influence (around 573473 km from the surface of Mars) in a hyperbolic trajectory. At the time the spacecraft reaches the closest approach to Mars (Periapsis), it is captured into planned orbit around mars by imparting ∆V retro which is called the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) manoeuvre. The Earth-Mars trajectory is shown in the above figure. ISRO plans to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission during the November 2013 window utilizing minimum energy transfer opportunity.

http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission/mars-orbiter-mission-profile

 

[Kamikaze Pilot]

I am saddened that it took the country of pen-pushers to take such strides.

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

GSLV has already completed developmental flights and the first normal flights are successful. With 2 more GSLV this year we can launch Mangalyaan with it. Hopefully collaborate with Americans or Europeans for an rover. That landing part will be very tough which we might need assistance if we are launching it in 2018.

 

[proud_indian]

GSLV has already completed developmental flights and the first normal flights are successful. With 2 more GSLV this year we can launch Mangalyaan with it. Hopefully collaborate with Americans or Europeans for an rover. That landing part will be very tough which we might need assistance if we are launching it in 2018.

before that we'll have Team Indus's rover landed on moon. Maybe it can help isro collect some data as many isro people are collaborating with them.