Mars Orbiter Mission is in good nick, says ISRO chief

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Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said on Sunday that the health of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or Mangalyaan was extremely good.

Speaking to presspersons after participating in the Graduation Day ceremony of SMV Institute of Technology and Management (SMVITM) here in Karnataka, Mr. Kumar said that the ISRO had a programme in Bengaluru on November 5, where it marked two years of completion of launch of Mangalyaan and more than a year of its orbiting around the Mars.

All five payloads of MOM were sending data on a regular basis. “It is completing one revolution around the Mars roughly in two and a half days. All the sub-systems are working fine. We still have about 35 kg of fuel. The satellite is expected to last for quite some time,” he said.

Future plans ::

To a query, he said Chandrayaan-2 would carry a lander and a rover. It would help in having a controlled landing on the surface of the moon. The rover would move on the surface of the moon. It would collect data and send it to Earth. Chandrayaan-2 was likely to be launched in 2017 or 2018. The ISRO was planning to launch Aditya, the satellite, which would help in studying solar eclipses on continuous basis and also other aspects of the Sun.

The ISRO had also set up a study team which was studying the future programmes to be taken by the organisation. The team would study if there was a need for another Mars Mission or the need to go to Venus or asteroids. “The team is going to come up with a study report. The ISRO also has an advisory committee headed by scientist U.R. Rao, which will take a decision on future missions,” he said.

All the five payloads of the Astrosat, the dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory launched by the ISRO in September, were functioning well. The four payloads on it were returning data and its systems were working well.

In the immediate future, the ISRO planned to increase its launch frequencies. GSAT-15, a communication satellite, would be launched on November 10. There would be a launch every month from December 2015 to March 2016.