Mars Mission: India’s Tryst with the Red Planet
India’s first-ever Mars mission would begin its travel towards the Red Planet on November 5, 2013. It would take around nine months for this satellite to reach Mars orbit and start taking the observations. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) rocket with Mars Orbiter Spacecraft onboard will be launched from Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) coast, nearly 50 miles north of Chennai city.
This mission was initially scheduled for takeoff on October 28. However, the launch was postponed because one of the two ships designated to monitor the health and movement of Indian craft could not reach the destination close to the Fiji islands in time owing to bad weather in the Pacific Ocean.
Reaching Mars is a highly complicated task. The first attempt to observe Mars from a close vicinity was made by the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1960. The first six attempts were failures, five by the USSR and one by the US. The success came on the seventh attempt (1964) when the US’s Mariner-4 craft flew close to Mars and was able to take 21 pictures. Since then, many missions have been launched towards Mars, but the success rate has only been around 50%. Japan and China have attempted to reach Mars in Asia but without success.
India has the advantage of being a late beginner. Indian mission has been designed by learning from the experiences of other countries. India also banks on its experience with the Moon mission. Nevertheless, reaching Mars is still a major challenge. The distance of the Moon from Earth is about 400,000 km, and the average distance of Mars from the Earth is over 200 times more than this distance. Hence, the basic challenge is to travel such a long distance and then enter the Martian atmosphere. The craft has to travel and navigate for around 300 days, encountering unknown challenges of radiation, and subsequently, its various technical systems, which were inactive for 300 days, are expected to perform accurately, and engines need to fire.
This Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is India's first interplanetary probe, and it will carry five payloads designed for different applications. They are meant to explore Mars's surface features, study its morphology and mineralogy, and undertake observations about the Martian atmosphere. Also, there is a specific sensor designed to study the presence of Methane on Mars. Various observations by this sensor could indirectly assist in knowing about the possibility of life's existence on Mars, either in the past or present. It is important to note that it would take around 20 minutes for any signal sent from Earth to reach this craft. Hence, this craft cannot be controlled on a real-time basis from the Earth. The craft has been designed to make decisions to overcome this limitation. India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has made specific arrangements for Deep Space communications, and the American Space Agency (NASA) is expected to assist ISRO in this regard.
Broadly, this mission could be viewed in two parts: it is a technological mission until it establishes correctly in the Martian orbit, and subsequently, it becomes a science mission when it starts taking observations. There has been some criticism from certain quarters about the efficacy of this mission, and a question has been raised, ‘should a developing country spend money on such missions instead of spending the same money on schemes of social importance’?
The entire Mars mission would cost nearly Rs 450 cores, less than one passenger airliner aircraft. On average, Air India encounters a loss of Rs 10 cores a day, so the mission's price amounts to one and a half months of loss incurred by Air India! Unfortunately, even though the suggestion of privatization of Air India is not acceptable to many, a justifiable investment in the country's long-term development of science and technology often gets criticized unnecessarily.
The usefulness of undertaking such a mission only to send a limited number of sensors for an overall payload of only around 15kg has been criticized even by some from the scientific community. To an extent, this criticism is valid. However, it must be appreciated that because of the compulsions of long-distance travel, the best opportunity to undertake the Mars missions becomes available only after a gap of 26 months. Hence, it was important for ISRO to grab this opportunity. The challenge of reaching Mars is so enormous that for planning something big for the future, it is essential first to master a few technologies; hence, this mission could also be viewed as a demonstrator of indigenous technology advancement. This experience would be of considerable importance to planning strategic future missions (the next opportunities are available in 2016 and 2018) of ISRO.
Lastly, the geostrategic significance of such a mission should not be ignored. The success of this mission would make India the only Asian country to reach Mars. Such success could also be the best ‘advertisement’ for ISRO to attract a large chunk of the space business. Finally, it is not about one-upmanship with China but telling the world we are amongst the best in the space domain. Prestige for the country is just incidental!