Test drive to Mars

2.38 pm, November 5, Sriharikota.

The moment marked a giant leap for Indian science. With a resounding roar, PSLV-C25 took off, beginning the journey of the orbiter to Mars. Within a minute, the great ball of fire turned into a tail of smoke and disappeared in the sky.

Just 15 minutes before the launch, P Kunhikrishnan, mission director for Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), switched on the computer on the orbiter. The computer then took over the controls and launched the rocket. The crowd of excited journalists, stationed eight kilometres from the launch pad at the media centre of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDCS) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, was kept abreast with each step through a public address system.

Forty-three minutes of PSLV’s journey was monitored at Sriharikota and by two Indian ships posted in the South Pacific Sea. Use of ships was necessitated due to extra time taken by the rocket to reach the orbit—scientists wanted the rocket to reach the orbit at a specific angle. After the 43 minutes, PSLV released the orbiter in Earth’s orbit. Monitoring and control of the orbiter was taken over by the Indian Deep Space Network complex at Byalalu, a village near Bengaluru in Karnataka, and ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network at Peenya Industrial Area, also near Bengaluru. The solar panels of the orbiter were successfully deployed and manoeuvered to harness maximum solar energy.

“The spacecraft is in good health. Tests done on it found everything normal,” said S Arunan, project director of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). “The journey has just begun,” said K Radhakrishnan, chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after the launch.

For the next 25 days, the orbiter will go round the earth progressively increasing the length of its orbit as well as its velocity. During this time, it will increase the length of its orbit five times (see ‘Out of this world mission’). Two such manoeuvres have already been carried out in the early mornings of November 7 and 8. The sixth orbit increase, on December 1, will be the final send-off of the orbiter to Mars. It is expected to reach there in September 2014. It will be monitored for the next six to 10 months, the orbiter’s expected life.

The mission has placed India among the handful of countries which have attempted the journey to Mars. If the orbiter reaches Mars’ orbit and sends informations from there, the country will be the fourth to achieve the feat. “This is an incredibly exciting, challenging and demanding mission,” says K Kasturirangan, who headed ISRO till 2003. For Yash Pal, the first director of ISRO’s Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad, the orbiter is the organisation’s special gift to the nation. The mission marks the 50th year of ISRO’s existence.

On high speed mode

The mission has moved on a fast track. It took researchers at ISRO about 20 months to ready the Mangalyaan, often called so by scientists. The government allocated budgetary funds for it in March 2012 and on Independence Day that year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort that India would venture to the Red Planet. By October 2013, the orbiter was ready to go.

With elections round the corner, some critics write off the mission as the ruling party’s effort to give people a reason to cheer through this demonstration of scientific prowess. Others say it is an attempt to defeat China in the race to reach Mars—China’s orbiter, sent in 2011, had failed. Yet another group suggested that this is a way of offsetting the failure to send Chandrayaan-2 on time.

ISRO officials say speed was necessary to ensure that the orbiter was launched when it would take the least energy to reach Mars. By launching it between October 28 and November 19, the space research body ensured that it would need to travel the least distance to reach the Martian orbit. The orbiter will be taken to Mars in two steps. First, PSLV-C25 carries it to Earth’s orbit and releases it. The process takes 25 days. In the second stage, the orbiter, after travelling in space for nearly 300 days, will be injected into Mars’ orbit. This is a novel method.

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter is also expected to be injected in the planet’s orbit in September 2014. It is being launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, US, on November 18, 2013, using Atlas V 401 rocket.

How info will come home

Till the time the orbiter is still under the earth’s influence, it will be monitored by an 18-metre antenna at the Byalalu station. Once it enters the heliosphere, sphere of Sun’s influence, it would be followed by a 32-metre antenna, also stationed at Byalalu. The signals will be monitored 24x7. Support for ground observation has been taken from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has stations around the world and has bigger antennas. These signals will be transferred to the Peenya centre through an optic fibre leased from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Project director S Arunan will monitor the orbiter’s movements and send appropriate signals to control it.

The orbiter is programmed to function independently. This is important as each message from Earth can take between 4 and 20 minutes to reach Mars. If something goes amiss, the satellite should be able to figure out the problem and switch to the safe mode. To ensure autonomy during this time, commands for the orbiter have already been programmed. However, commands over and above the programmed ones will be sent from ground. These could include command such as those to change the course or speed of the orbiter.

The orbiter manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is made of aluminium and weighs 1,350 kg. Of this, 850 kg is just the propellant. The payload—instruments that would carry out atmospheric, particle environment and surface imaging studies—weighs around 15 kg. These would start working the moment the orbiter is released from PSLV.

Payload forms the core of the mission. Five instrument will be responsible for sending information about Mars back home (see ‘Payloads’ on facing page). Earlier Mars missions of other countries have carried all these instruments except the one responsible for measuring methane in the atmosphere. With this, India may answer the question on the presence of methane on Mars. On Earth, the gas is largely produced by living organisms. Finding methane could indicate that life existed, or exists, on Mars.

Latest data from NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is presently exploring Mars, shows that methane is not present on the planet’s Gale Crater area. ISRO scientists say their methane study is better as it will give information on the presence of the gas in the atmosphere unlike Curiosity, which gave data in situ, only at a single position.

ISRO scientists generated as many as 30 ideas for the kind of instruments that would best suit this purpose. Nine of these were found feasible and only the best five were finally put on the Mangalyaan. Around 1 terabyte of information is expected from the mission, which would be saved at the Indian Space Science Data Center at Byalalu.

The Indian mission has a well-defined agenda—to demonstrate that it has the capability to reach Mars and that it can carry out studies there. Scientists hope that the mission would help develop applications which would help the common man. For instance, remote sensing became possible only after satellites were sent to the upper atmosphere.

Scientists hope that similar, path-breaking benefits would emerge from missions to space. “India is the leader in space applications,” says Radhakrishnan. ISRO has launched as many as 70 satellites in the past four decades and helped improve mobile communication, weather monitoring, education, telemedicine, education, disaster management, and search and rescue operations. Lessons learnt would enhance autonomy of such satellites.

The mission has cost India Rs 450 crore, thrice of what Shahrukh Khan-starrer Chennai Express earned in its first week (Rs 156.70 crore) of release. “The space programme gets 0.04 per cent of the Centre’s expenditure and the Mars mission represents just 0.34 per cent of our funds,” says Radhakrishnan. The mission would lead to excitement and enrichment of knowledge. This is why we study science, he says.

Earlier missions have failed to show the presence of water and methane. Mangalyaan has instruments which could provide crucial clues

India’s Mangalyaan will go around Mars four decades after Mariner 9, a NASA orbiter, became the first spacecraft to enter the planet’s orbit on November 14, 1971 (see ‘Martian trips’). At present, three orbiters—one from the European Space Agency (ESA) and two from NASA—are monitoring Mars. Two rovers are doing the same. But success rate of missions to the planet has been poor. About two-thirds of the missions have failed. Exploring Mars is, therefore, considered a difficult task. So, how can India succeed where others have failed? “We have learnt from the failures of earlier missions,” says K Radhakrishnan, chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The success of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) may well open an exciting way ahead for India in unravelling mysteries of the Red Planet. “If the mission is successful, we will look at a larger mission,” says Radhakrishnan.

India’s space programme focuses on self-reliance in satellite science. The ISRO chief says application-oriented, people-centric missions will put exacting demands and drive frontier technologies. The technologies will find application in satellites and enable new applications for the common man. “It is a chain,” he explains.

Ajey Lele, research fellow at the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, says the “biggest achievement” would be to be able to communicate with the orbiter after 300 days. “Other countries may have developed technologies similar to us, but it is necessary to develop indigenous competence because countries do not share all technologies. We are often deprived of technologies after our nuclear tests,” he adds.

The benefits of the mission cannot be immediately identified, says Srikumar Bannerji, former chairperson of Atomic Energy Commission of India. Precision technology and the capability to control instruments from a distance that has been developed for the mission could, some day, help improve healthcare, he says. The technology could also result in bringing resources from space to the earth, he adds.

All this hinges on the obiter’s ability to survive the long journey, fraught with dangers. Comet 2013/A1 would be close to Mars in September 2014, when the orbiter will reach Mars’ orbit. While this could be an opportunity to study the comet closely, it could also destroy the orbiter. Fuel economy must also be maintained. The orbiter has been rationed a specific amount of fuel. Delay could easily derail the mission.

Lessons learnt

Missions to Mars were initiated in the 1960s. NASA records a total of 43 missions, including fly-by satellites, orbiters, landers and rovers. While a fly-by satellite simply passes by the planet, an orbiter orbits it, a lander sits on its surface, and a rover even moves around.

The erstwhile Soviet Union began the race to Mars but it was US’ Mariner 4 which successfully reached the planet in 1965. These missions yielded tangible results for advancing our knowledge of the planet. Knowing Mars can provide an understanding of Earth’s future. Unravelling the planet’s atmospheric loss would enable scientists to better understand how Mars transformed from a once water-rich planet to today’s drier, colder and less hospitable world.

The instruments monitoring Mars regularly provide new data and try to answer these key questions. A paper published in the September 27 issue of the journal Science provides an analysis of the first set of data sent by the chemistry and mineralogy X-ray diffraction instrument on NASA’S rover Curiosity, which reached Mars in 2012. When researchers compared the X-ray diffraction pattern sent back by Curiosity to the reference database of minerals prepared on Earth, they found that the soil there has mineral ores such as olivine, augite, pigeonite, magnetite, quartz, anhydrite, hematite and ilmenite. Olivine is a silicate mineral found abundantly on Earth. The findings suggest that the soil near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater is similar to soils on the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The instrument also found loose, dark, macroscopically homogeneous igneous rock on the surface. The rock, named Jake M, compares closely with mugearite, an uncommon terrestrial rock type found on ocean islands and in rift zones. Curiosity is now on its way to Mount Sharp and would reach there by mid-2014.

Another NASA’S rover Opportunity is climbing Solander Point, the northern tip of the tallest hill it has encountered in the mission’s nearly 10 years on Mars. Opportunity reached Solander Point in August after months of driving from Cape York. Researchers used the rover to investigate a transition zone around the base of the ridge. The area has sulphate-rich geological formations and suggests that earlier, the environment was wet and acidic. As the rover climbs up, it is likely that it will be in contact with older rocks and this might provide clues about the time environmental conditions changed.

A paper published in the October 3 issue of the journal Nature describes a new type of volcanic construction on Mars. So far, this structure had been classified as an impact crater and was given the name Eden Patera. Researchers say it resulted from a large body of magma, loaded with dissolved gas, quickly rising to the surface through a thin crust. Once the material was expelled, the depression collapsed and led to the sinking of the ground around it. In the past, similar eruptions happened at what is now Yellowstone National Park in the US, Lake Toba in Indonesia and Lake Taupo in New Zealand. The findings are based on data sent by Mars Odyssey, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA’s Mars Express.

All these are just pieces of information, which fail to answer crucial questions. To get the big picture, researchers across the globe are fine-tuning instruments hoping to get more accurate data. For instance, data sent by US’ Viking landers failed to provide evidence of life on Mars. The reason became evident when researchers took duplicate instruments from Viking into the Atacama Desert in South America. The instruments failed to find life despite its existence in the region. Researchers figured that Atacama’s oxidising soil conditions destroy organic molecules and this could be the reason for the apparent sterility of the Martian soils. Researchers have now prepared new instruments that have confirmed the presence of microorganisms in Atacama and if there is subsurface life on Mars, the instruments will detect it too.

Similarly, an instrument shortlisted for NASA’s 2020 Mars mission is a rover built by Carnegie-Mellon University. This machine takes samples and tests it on an instrument called the Mars Microbeam Raman Spectrometer. This provides better understanding of the samples.

Indian scientists in-charge of MOM have also fine-tuned the payloads. V Koteshwara Rao, scientific secretary of ISRO, says the instruments sent are not similar to those in the earlier missions. These are more sensitive, and all instruments, except the tri-colour camera, would provide new information. Mangalyaan would carry out the first satellite-based observation of methane on Mars. The team has ensured that the data and measurements sent from Mars are accurate. “The instruments have been calibrated well and this was the most challenging part of the mission,” says Rao. Accuracy of data is important for the mission in explaining the mysteries of Mars. May be, our Mangalyaan would stumble upon something that would change the space.

Tickets to Mars   But it may not be holiday One would think that knowledge of harsh environmental conditions on Mars would dissuade tourists. But 200,000 people from around the world have registered to be considered for the Mars One project. Mars One is a Dutch not-for-profit foundation launched by Bas Lansdorp, an entrepreneur and inventor. The foundation hopes to establish a permanent human settlement of four persons on Mars in 2023. These astronauts will have to have five qualities—resilience, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust and resourcefulness. They will be trained so that they can repair equipment, treat people in case of medical problems, and study the planet’s geology and life. The four persons will have no way of returning to Earth, though they would be able to call home through satellites. Inspiration Mars Foundation, an American non-profit founded by multimillionaire Dennis Tito, the first person to go in space on private funding, also plans to launch a manned mission to fly by Mars in January 2018. At this time, the planets will align in such a way that it would be possible to make a to-and-fro trip to Mars in just 501 days. The flyby will go within 160 km of Mars and return to Earth. “For now, India has no plans to place people on Mars, but it has to be accepted that space travel is now a reality,” says Ajey Lele, research fellow at the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Some of the early entrants are Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline owned by US’ Virgin Group in collaboration with Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments PJS. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, California was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur Elon Musk. SpaceX is developing its own rocket family called Falcon and a capsule named Dragon. “Generally, two types of space travels are discussed—those in Earth’s orbit and those beyond it. Companies offer a short spin in space for a few minutes, experience weightlessness, see the twinkle-free starfield and look at Earth from a distance. People are doing serious work in this sector and India may want to be part of this industry,” says Lele. Many technologies are being developed to aid space travellers. Recently, three Mars suits were tested for the agility and dexterity they allow to wearers. The suits would provide them oxygen to breathe and maintain comfortable temperature and pressure. The three space suits tested were developed by Austrian Space Forum in Innsbruck of Austria, Human Spaceflight Laboratory of the University of North Dakota, US, and Mars Desert Research Station, Utah in the US. Results from the Mars 2013 tests have been submitted for publication in a special edition of the scientific journal Astrobiology for publication in early 2014.