Update: Mangalyaan's Main Engine Test Fired, Maven In Orbit

William Robinson writes Before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter Mars orbit, Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) scientists reignited the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft's main engine for four seconds as a trial. The liquid apogee motor (LAM) engine has been idle for about 300 days since the spacecraft left the Earth's orbit on a Martian trajectory on December 1, 2013. The short-duration test was to ensure that the engine is in good shape for the 24-minute crucial maneuver on Wednesday." In other Mars mission updates, NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late Sunday after a 442 million-mile journey that began nearly a year ago.

Comments

I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[i kan reed]

The wikipedia page for those as ignorant as I am. It's apparently almost entirely a proof of concept that India's space agency can manage an interplanetary orbiter. The mission's main profile seems to be "get into stable geocentric orbit around mars".

I'm sure the atmospheric monitoring tools are scientifically useful to someone though.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[Thanshin]

Indeed. Now that KSP has a budget mode, safe missions to test feasibility with almost no scientific payload became more interesting.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[tomhath]

If they're trying for a geocentric orbit around Mars they're going to have problems. I suspect an areocentric orbit is the goal.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[X0563511]

I'm sure he was thinking of a stationary or synchronous orbit anyway, which is a bit more specific than areocentric :P

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[i kan reed]

Yeah, I know. I "translated" the use of aerocentric from Wikipedia to geocentric on the grounds of familiarity to most people. Sue me.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[Anonymous Coward]

It's there to look for methane (a life indicator), the one thing MAVEN's designers absolutely swore it wasn't there to look for since the rovers failed to find any trace of it on the surface.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[i kan reed]

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure I am, but doesn't modern abiogenesis theory cite methane as one of the precursors to live, not just a product of it?

Like wasn't it one of the ingredients in the Miller-Urey experiment(along with ammonia, hydrogen, and water)?

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[i kan reed]

You say that as if excrement and public health aren't some of the primary targets of the Indian government to address right now. They can expend a little bit of money to be scientifically competitive in the future, while also addressing some of the more mundane problems their nation faces at the same time.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[cjameshuff]

It's a precursor, but not one that's stable in an atmosphere exposed to sunlight in the long term. Early Earth may have had some delivered by icy impactors. Titan has a significant quantity in the atmosphere, but even out in Saturn orbit there's enough sunlight that it's constantly being broken up and recombining into heavier hydrocarbons and other photochemical smog components. Titan is largely composed of ices and cryovolcanism is a likely source of replacement methane. There's no obvious sign of similar reserves on Mars, and traces of methane could be a sign of microbial life that are actively producing it.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[kaiser423]

Yes, it's very interesting. The insertion burn is also going to be very interesting. For those that don't know, the Indian Space Agency has been building a bigger rocket for a while, but its been beset with delays. This orbiter was originally supposed to go on their bigger rocket, but it's not very reliable right now.

So, they put it on one of their smaller rockets. The net of this is that the orbiter itself had to use up most of its fuel just escaping Earth's orbit, leaving very, very little for the actual insertion burn. They're going to end up in a highly eccentric orbit due to not having enough fuel to create a nice circular one. This means that a lot of the time, they're going to be very far from Mars, but when they get close they'll actually dip pretty darn close and those atmospheric sensors will be actually fairly deep into the atmosphere. Sadly, this also means that the orbit isn't as stable as they would like and will degenerate fairly quickly. But, all in all that's quite impressive! If they end up getting a bit more thrust out than planned, they make be able to circularize it a bit more....

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[kaiser423]

I forgot to mention comet Siding Spring is making a close approach by MArs, which is expeted to up to *double* the amount of hydrogen in Mar's upper atmosphere and increase drag from 1.4x to 40x normal drag. If it ends up bad, it could drastically shorten Mangalyaan's life and fairly considerably shorten the life of all other orbiters around Mars. That should happen around October 19th. But we might get to see some good pictures of the comet from Mars as well as (although rated as a minimal increase, with minor risk to spacecraft) a nice meteor shower around Mars.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[higuita]

India is both a rich and poor country... is acts like a rich country when doing big projects and acts like a poor country when requesting money and support. The true is that they have very rich people and very poor people... and the power usually don't care much about the poor (other than it is cheap labor)

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[Muad'Dave]

You are not authorized to orbit my nipples.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[davester666]

...and even it doesn't have a toilet. it has to wait until it can orbit behind a planet to dump it's waste in private.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah India just tends to have a bigger Kentucky and Georgia. Just Imagine USA with 50% of the population living in the Rural South-East and you get India.

A test fire?

[plover]

If they ran their test and discovered it didn't fire, what would they realistically be able to do? I mean either it fires on Wednesday and they insert it into their desired orbit, or it misfires and heads off into the Oort cloud. It's not like if it fails the test today they can send a repair crew up there to re-tighten the muffler bearings.

Re: A test fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

They had Plan B if the test firing failed.

Re:A test fire?

[drainbramage]

If there is one thing India has a lot of experience in it is remote support.

Re:A test fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a test of their main engine. If it failed, they would go to plan B. From what I vaguely recall, they would be using their orientation thrusters.

Re:A test fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they ran their test and discovered it didn't fire, what would they realistically be able to do? I mean either it fires on Wednesday and they insert it into their desired orbit, or it misfires and heads off into the Oort cloud. It's not like if it fails the test today they can send a repair crew up there to re-tighten the muffler bearings.

If the test fire does not work they would have to upload backup instructions for the 8 orientation thrusters to do the job. if even that did not work they could setup a webex call during PST hours and debug it.

Will Robinson. Seriously?

[kaizendojo]

I guess it's appropriate, but seriously funny.

bald-faced blue-planet invader propeganda

[Thud457]

I won't believe it until I read the official statement from K'breel, leader of the council.

Gradle

[Redmancometh]

This is why I use gradle for my dependency management.