Indian Mars Probe Successfully Enters Sun-Centric Orbit

New submitter palemantle writes with this excerpt from The Hindu, updating our earlier mention of the successful launch of India's Mars-bound probe: "In a remarkably successful execution of a complex manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) fired the propulsion system on board the spacecraft for a prolonged duration of 23 minutes from 0049 hours on Sunday. In space parlance, the manoeuvre is called Trans-Mars Injection (TMI). ISRO called it 'the mother of all slingshots.' Celebrations broke out at the control centre of the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore from where the spacecraft specialists gave commands for the orbiter's 440 Newton engine to begin firing. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, is designed to demonstrate the technological capability to reach Mars orbit. But the $72m (£45m) probe will also carry out experiments, including a search for methane gas in the planet's atmosphere."

Comments

3.. 2.. 1..

[SB9876]

Countdown to a flood of unfunny, racist Indian call center jokes...

Re:3.. 2.. 1..

[PopeRatzo]

I'm not sure why someone who sends out a printed invitation for racist jokes would get modded "Insightful".

I didn't see any such jokes until you mentioned them, and then the ones that came were pretty half-hearted.

Maybe you need to have a little more faith in people.

Re:Good For Them

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is in now way India-specific; but "I'd better shore up my battered sense of importance by getting my foot on the other guy's neck" seems to be the response that crops up to the sensation of vast, cosmic, insignificance as often as some nobler sense of kinship with your fellow gravity-well-dwellers.

I don't exactly like the fact; but when being better in some absolute sense isn't an option, we frequently turn to finding somebody to be worse, as though that's a substitute.

What the heck has happened to the West ?

[Taco Cowboy]

India's Mars probe finally leaves Earth-bound orbits on the 1st of December 2013.

On the very same day, China is set to launch its first lunar lander.

Both India and China are from Asia.

Where are the Europeans ?

Where are the Americans ?

What the heck happened to the usually technologically more advanced societies of the Western countries ?

Asia is playing catch up very very fast, and before long, they might even get ahead of you guys !

Re:What the heck has happened to the West ?

[ImOuttaHere]

To start, the US de-funded scientific research. It had to, in part, because Ronald Raygun privatized many government functions. What was the practical effect? It means that rather than paying managers of a government function a government salary, you now take bids from private companies who have only one interest at heart: To make the managers of the private company rich. The cost of government has risen dramatically thereby. Think I'm wrong? Look at SAIC, Ross Perot and his old company, and all the companies related to war and contracting "security" services (just to scratch the surface). Which is directly related to why America spends well north of 55 percent of it's national budget on war related costs, instead of the less than 25 percent of a national budget that European countries do. So, in a country where people do not like government, don't want to pay any tax, in a country where R&D incentives (first initiated during WWII) are removed, in a country that feels it's OK to send jobs to China (effectively making China's middle class rich and America's poor) you end up being left behind on the ideological, scientific, basic research items.

Europe has it's own financial problems right now. It did three things. First, it allowed Germany to become not only the bankers of the EU, but to become the economic powerhouse of the EU as well. Second, many EU countries bought a ton of AAA-rated US mortgage packages that turned out to be junk. Take a close look at which countries bought what and you'll see the effect I'm pointing out. Third, the EU tried to grow their economy by doing what the US and UK did; make cheap loans available as a means of boosting production. Bad move, right? Credit bubbles seldom last forever. Look at what it did to Spain.

Which leads me to this: First world nation's governments are deeply involved in "realpolitik", and are no longer paying attention to the ideologies on which they were founded or the ideologies of science as it might relate to industry. In the US and UK this means enabling corporate and banker greed. On mainland Europe, this means getting wrapped around the axle of competing political interests.

...What the heck happened to the usually technologically more advanced societies of the Western countries ?

Asia is playing catch up very very fast, and before long, they might even get ahead of you guys !

Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere

[ThatsMyNick]

Well 73 million is 0.025% of their yearly budget (73m/280b). Spending the renaming 99.975% of the budget will have more appropriately will have more of effect on corruption, poverty, and inequality issues in my opinion. If help improve research and help improve research and manufacturing technology, it would probably more than pay for itself. It would also probably bring more business to Antrix (commercial wing of ISRO), and probably even make money for the Indian govt, and end up with a net gain rather than 72 million expense.

Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere

[fredprado]

If all countries wait to end poverty, corruption and inequality "issues", before researching space or anything else, it won't ever be done. India does a LOT of things wrongly, but in this it is on the right track, unlike US, which keep cutting funds from NASA in name of trying to fix social problems that strangely keep getting worse and worse the more money the government apply on them.

An Indian Odyssey

[varshar]

Excellent work by our scientists and engineers at ISRO.

Mangalyaan is thus far proving:

1. How reliable PSLV series is for commercial space-launch.

2. How far India has come in mastery over orbital mechanics - witness the precise application of Oberth effect. This isn't just your granddads Hohmann slingshot. At least not yet.

3. Setting benchmark pricing for Mars transit at USD 70 Mn. for 485 Kg payload viz. 144K USD per Kg.

4. Generating huge impact among school kids. Visits to Nehru planetarium are no longer about US this and Russia that... even though we owe them for being pioneers.

I look forward to the next logical extension viz. manned-mission with the Indian flag atop Olympus Mons.

Varun

Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere

[AHuxley]

India asked itself the about the payback of advanced technologies in the late 1940's to 1960's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisation#Goals_and_objectives
Seems they got the funding mix right and can now enjoy the long term tech exports and get to add to space science :)

Re:Great but... money better spent elsewhere

[idji]

This project cost 70M$. that is 5.8c per Indian.
If this rocket inspires 20-50 million Indian poor children to study harder at school, learn Math and be an Engineer, then this project has a FANTASTIC value for the country of India.
I suspect this is money extremely well spent to inspire masses of children to take destiny in their own hands and rid themselves and their family of the poverty trap, by believing that an ordinary Indian child can do something extraordinary in the village, town, city, state and planet
I just ran 3 IT seminars in 3 Australian cities - all three had 50% participants from India - why, because Indians aspire to Math, Engineering, and Australians aspire to be sport heroes, lawyers and slackers, while their government wins an election on "Turn back the refugee boats" and "Kill the Carbon Tax". Where are their inspiring projects?