Posted on 11/20/2013 9:51:08 PM PST by MBT ARJUN
Even as the first Indian spacecraft to Mars hovers around Earth to zip off into space this month-end, scientists are agog about the latest Mars-bound visitor; an object that could be our orbiter’s companion of sorts there next year.
NASA on Monday shot off MAVEN, its 21st Mars venture, directly towards the planet from Florida.
Assuming that controllers at ISRO put their Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also on that track by December 1, MOM is due to arrive around Mars on September 24, 2014, two days after MAVEN would have.
It could arguably be a rare tango of two separate, unconnected planetary probes sent by two countries.
(An almost similar event happened briefly with Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in August 2009.)
What could happen when MOM and MAVEN are both around Mars?
Apparently there are exciting chances of MOM taking pictures of the orbiting MAVEN and two older NASA robotic labs that rove the Red Planet: Curiosity (since 2012) and Opportunity (2004).
MOM’s colour camera is designed to look at Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos.
V. Adimurthy, an ISRO veteran and its Kerala-based senior adviser on inter-planetary missions, said the international scientific community would be eager to know the findings of the two missions and to blend them for a better understanding of Mars than now.
MAVEN, meaning an expert in Hebrew, is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN.
It is superior to MOM in many ways but the two probes broadly aim to unravel some of the old Martian puzzle.
MOM would study its atmosphere and the mysterious spurts of life-indicating methane; MAVEN would look for Mars’s lost atmosphere.
‘Unique timing’
About the missions taking off now, Dr. Adimurthy told The Hindu , “The timing is unique this year. The Mars-Earth geometry and the eccentric Mars orbit offer the shortest route for any interested country just now. The opportunities to go to Mars are limited and this is a good one.”
Although an opportunity knocks every 26 months, all of them, he said, are not identical.
“The next one comes up in January 2016. But the really good opportunity will be not then but in May 2018. For us, it was important to do it no.”
He said doing it January 2016 would be costlier for any agency. “The speed to be given to the spacecraft now is 2.5 km per second; in 2016 it would be 3.6 km per second and would need higher propulsion and lighter payloads” than the current 15 kg.
‘Novel experiment’
Dr. Adimurthy, who is Dean, Research, at ISRO’s Indian Institute of Space Science & Technology, described MOM as “a unique experiment that nobody has attempted”. Considering the lower rocket power available and just two years to prepare the instruments, “We have made the best use of this opportunity.”
NASA used the powerful Atlas V launcher to send up its MAVEN directly out of Earth.
While MAVEN would orbit Mars in a 150 km x 6,200 km elliptical orbit, far closer than MOM’s 370 km x 80,000 km path, Dr. Adimurthy said MOM’s cameras would give advantageously different visages – with close-ups and panoramas of Mars
At the rate it’s going they’re going to have to set up a NORAD on Mars to keep track of all satellites in orbit.
If they weren’t already sure that Deimos doesn’t have an atmosphere, they could also launch DAD—Deimos Atmospheric Detector.
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