
India's Mars mission crosses half the distance. - easyname
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/indias-mars-mission-crosses-half-the-distance/articleshow/33503166.cms
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jacquesm
The last 20 Km of missions like these are the hard ones, once you're off the
pad. It's roughly 1/3rd between failure to launch, failure to arrive at the
destination planet and failure to land (the latter not applicable here since
it is an orbiter).

60% of the missions fail, which really isn't all that surprising given the
complexities of a project like this.

Great to see it got this far, hoping that it will complete the interplanetary
travel part of the mission around September of this year.

Lots of data here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission)

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JumpCrisscross
> _The Rs 450-crore mission intends to explore the presence of Methane in the
> Red Planet with the help of five scientific instruments on board the
> spacecraft._

That is roughly $75 million.

~~~
makmanalp
Isn't that dirt cheap for a trip to Mars? Like, much lower than NASA missions
to the moon?

~~~
swatkat
Apart from the economic differences (outlined in Robert Frost's Quora post),
ISRO also practised "frugal engineering"[1] by making use of their existing
technologies/framework while building spacecraft. For example, MOM is based on
ISRO's proven I-1K spacecraft bus[2], and its onboard propulsion system is
based on their apogee kick motor[3]. Payloads are completely new and developed
specific to the mission.

ISRO's Moon mission Chandrayaan-1[4] cost around $64 million back in 2008.
It's relatively "costly" compared to Mars mission because ISRO had to do some
groundwork to support such deep space missions. For example, Indian Deep Space
Network[5] was built at that time to track Chandrayaan-1; and now it's being
used to track MOM as well.

[1][http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news/43561612_1_moon-
mission-chandrayaan-i-isro)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-1K](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-1K)

[3][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apogee_kick_motor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apogee_kick_motor)

[4][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1)

[5][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Deep_Space_Network](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Deep_Space_Network)

~~~
DougWebb
I hope the frugal engineering works out for them. In 1990 I spent a semester
working at GE AstroSpace as an intern, and one of my tasks was a small role on
the Mars Observer(1) probe. It was also a frugal, based on an Earth-orbiting
satellite design that was repurposed for a deep-space mission to Mars orbit.
It apparently blew up when it got there, likely due to a failure in the fuel
system. That's where I come in.

In early 1990, there was a weight problem with the spacecraft, and the
engineers were looking for ways to eliminate mass. I was working with the
propulsion team, and my task was to go through all of the blueprints, count
components, and document their mass. The team was going to use that to
determine which components were redundant (for safety) and how much mass could
be eliminated by removing them.

I did my task, and went on to something else so I don't know how the system
was modified. But from what I've read about the loss of the spacecraft, a
leading theory is that one of the valves in the propulsion system failed and
that led to the explosion. The valves were designed to be opened very soon
after launch, once the satellite reached Earth orbit; they weren't designed
for the deep-freeze of a two-year trip to Mars before being opened. I beleive
that not only did the valve malfunction, but its redundant backup had also
been removed based, in part, on the task I performed. If there hadn't been a
weight problem (which may also have been to frugal engineering to reduce fuel
requirements), the explosion might not have happened.

I've never felt any responsibilty; my task was to provide information, not
decisions. But it would have been nice if I was involved with a more
successful mission.

(1)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer)

~~~
swatkat
Thanks for sharing your anecdote!

In fact, ISRO's Moon mission Chandrayaan-1 ended prematurely due to
overheating of star sensor and power supply unit (inadequate thermal
protection!). They underestimated the amount of radiation from the Sun and
that reflected by the Moon, at an orbit of 100km from the Moon[1].

For MOM, ISRO has "hardened" their satellite bus with better thermal
protection, larger solar panels, redundant subsystems, redundant fuel lines,
FDIR system etc.[2] Hoping for the best :)

[1][http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/48921.aspx](http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/48921.aspx)

[2][http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/pdf/pslv-c25-brochure.pdf](http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/pdf/pslv-c25-brochure.pdf)
("Major Challenges" section)

~~~
DougWebb
Cool. Another of my jobs at GE AstroSpace involved writing software to help
with the analysis of thermal system modeling. At its heart, thermal modeling
is basically the same as one of the approaches for lighting models for 3D
graphics: every surface within the spacecraft is radiating and absorbing heat
from every other surface that it faces. This is similar to the way every
surface in a 3D model visualization is emitting, reflecting, and absorbing
various frequencies of light from every other surface it faces in the model.

The math is the same, but in the thermal model you're calculating an
equilibrium state to figure out the final temperature of each surface, or
cyclic variation in the case of a rotating spacecraft with the sun and other
emitting bodies around it. That tells you if temperatures are within the
tolerance range of the components over the mission lifetime. If not, you have
to add thermal protection and rerun the simulation.

This probably all goes a lot faster today than it did on the 1990's era VAX
minicomputer I was using. There's probably real-time visualization now, which
I'll bet is pretty cool.

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swatkat
MOM is ISRO's first inter-planetary mission. I've been following ISRO MOM
since its launch - those orbit raising manoeuvres and Trans-Mars Injection
were a nail biting experience :) Wishing them best of luck. Eagerly waiting
for September 2014, for Mars orbit insertion.

Here's a nice interactive animation of NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM spacecrafts. It
fetches real-time data from NASA JPL HORIZONS ephemerides:

[http://sankara.net/mom.html](http://sankara.net/mom.html)

By the way, for space/rocket enthusiasts out there - ISRO will be doing a sub-
orbital test of their next gen "monster rocket" GSLV Mk3[1] in June. It will
carry a Crew Module[2] as payload. This will be interesting.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_Satellite_Launch...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle_Mk_III)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle)

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danbruc
In highly developed countries there is a lot of discussion about the large
disparity between the poor and the rich, but India seems to dwarf just
everything by orders of magnitude. Every time I read about India's space
program I am just unable to comprehend how a nation can at the same time fly
to Mars and have a large part of their population live in slums.

UPDATE: I just want to clarify - I don't want to judge this as good or bad, I
just want to express that I am unable to bend my mind around that.

~~~
ankeshk
Response to having a space program while having poverty:
[http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-
Pove...](http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-Poverty-and-
Closet-Racism)

Please scroll down a bit because the awesome part comes after the subhead: Why
India needs a MARS program.

~~~
danbruc
Is that supported by the majority of the population? Naively I would expect
that people would prefer immediate improvements over long term benefits.

~~~
pavanky
India does have a lot of domestic and economic policies to bring people out of
poverty. The said policies however are at the mercy of politicians who are
corrupt and do not deliver.

India spends 0.2% on space exploration and 12% on defence. If you want to
complain about misaligned priorities complain about our defence that takes up
the most resources but does very little indigenous development rather than our
space program that costs next to nothing but develops a lot of indigenous
technology.

------
known
And
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition_in_India](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition_in_India)

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surana90
> _India 's national space agency ISRO would be the fourth after agencies in
> US, Russia and Europe to have undertaken a successful mission to the red
> planet._

Good to see this among all the political slugfest going on in India at the
moment.

