India’s mission to Mars has encountered its first problem as the Orbiter Spacecraft was not able to raise its orbit to 100,000 km.
New Delhi, Nov 11/Nationalturk – India’s mission to Mars, which was launched last week, has encountered its first problem as the Orbiter Spacecraft was not able to raise its orbit to the required 100,000 km.
“During the orbit-raising operations conducted since November 5, when the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was launched, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been testing and exercising the autonomy functions progressively, that are essential for Trans-Mars Injection (TMI) and Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI),”an Indian government spokesman said.
Prime, redundant star sensors functioning satisfactorily
He said during the first three orbit-raising operations, the prime and redundant chains of gyros, accelerometers, 22 Newton attitude control thrusters, attitude and orbit control electronics as well as the associated logics for their fault detection isolation, and reconfiguration have been exercised successfully. “The prime and redundant star sensors have been functioning satisfactorily. The primary coil of the solenoid flow control valve was used successfully for the first three orbit-raising operations.”
He said during the fourth orbit-raising operations held today (November 11), the redundancies built-in for the propulsion system were exercised, namely, (a) energising the primary and redundant coils of the solenoid flow control valve of 440 Newton Liquid Engine and (b) logic for thrust augmentation by the attitude control thrusters, when needed.
‘Flow to Liquid Engine stopped when primary, redundant coils were energised’
“However, when both primary and redundant coils were energised together, as one of the planned modes, the flow to the Liquid Engine stopped. The thrust level augmentation logic, as expected, came in and the operation continued using the attitude control thrusters. This sequence resulted in reduction of the incremental velocity. While this parallel mode of operating the two coils is not possible for subsequent operations, they could be operated independently in sequence,” the spokesman said.
He said during orbit-raising operation conducted this morning, the apogee (farthest point to Earth) of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was raised from 71,623 km to 78,276 km by imparting an incremental velocity of 35 metres/second (as against 130 metres/second originally planned to raise apogee to about 100,000 km).
“The spacecraft is in normal health. A supplementary orbit-raising operation is planned tomorrow to raise the apogee to nearly 100000 km,” added the spokesman.
The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as “Mangalyaan”, must travel more than 200 million kilometres over 300 days to reach an orbit around the Red Planet next September.
‘Spacecraft failed to reach desired velocity’
ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan told Indian TV news channel NDTV that spacecraft encountered a problem when a specific redundancy test was being conducted and it failed to reach the desired velocity it was to achieve.
“A failure analysis committee will examine why this problem happened. But crucially, not much fuel was wasted in the failed attempt,” he added.
The India’s first mission to Mars is loaded with a camera, an imaging spectrometer and a methane sensor to probe for life on the red planet. Instead of flying directly to Mars, the 1350-kg vehicle is scheduled to orbit Earth for nearly a month, building up the speed to “slingshot” its way out of the earth’s gravitational pull to embark on its 780-million-kilometre journey.
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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk India News
