India's space mission
to Mars, expected to be launched in October, will look for signature of
life and the reasons for loss of atmosphere on the red planet, a top
scientist said here.
Work on the Mars Orbiter Mission, announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
in his Independence Day address last year, is going on full steam and
equipment of the five experiments planned during the mission are
expected to be delivered to ISRO in March. "We should get the five payloads by March and we plan to start integrating them in the satellite from April," Jitendra Nath Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory and closely involved with the Mars mission, said.
ISRO's trusted warhorse rocket PSLV-XL is expected to launch the
mission some time in October from the spaceport Sriharikota which will
first keep orbiting the earth, achieving the necessary velocity to
escape the earth's gravitational pull.
As per existing plans,
the satellite is expected to exit the earth's orbit on November 26 and
embark on the journey to Mars which is expected to last for around 300
days. The scientists have drawn up plans to insert the satellite in an
orbit around Mars on September 22 next year.
Once in the
Martian orbit, the satellite will start taking pictures of the red
planet with an onboard colour camera and infra-red spectrometer, while
the Lyman-alpha photometer would measure atomic hydrogen in the Martian
atmosphere.
"The previous missions to Mars have shown that
there was water on the planet. We would want to know how and why the
planet lost water and carbon dioxide," Goswami told reporters on the
sidelines of the 100th Indian Science Congress
here. "Nobody has done research why water was lost. We are trying to do
things which were not precisely or exactly done," Goswami said.
Among the payloads for the mission is the Exospheric Neutral
Composition Analyser which would study the Martian atmosphere and a
Methane Sensor to look for of the gas, considered as a signature for
life, on the planet. "We want to know whether the source of methane is
thermogenic or biogenic," he said.
The Thermal Infrared Imaging
System would take pictures of the planet during the night. A key
challenge before the scientists is navigating the spacecraft from the
earth to Mars in deep space using the Deep Space Network at Baylalu on
the outskirts of Bangalore.
Another challenge would be to
re-activate the temporary inactive sub-systems of the spacecraft once it
reaches Mars after a 10-month journey through deep space. The liquid
rocket engine, capable of generating a 440 Newton thrust, would be
required to steer the spacecraft into the Martian orbit.
The
spacecraft will have bi-propellant system using monomethylhydrazine and
di-nitrogen tetroxide as fuel with additional safety and redundancy
features for Mars orbit insertion. The spacecraft, with a 1350 kg
lift-off mass, will have a single solar array with three panels of 1400 x
1800 mm capable of generating 750 watts of power in the Martian orbit.
It will also be equipped with a 36 AH Lithium-ion battery for power
storage.
For attitude and orbit control, the spacecraft will be
equipped with four reaction wheels, eight thrusters of 22 Newton each
and a 440 Newton liquid rocket engine. The Mars mission
will propel India to the elite club of five nations comprising the US,
Russia, Europe, China and Japan which have launched similar missions.
