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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.
Indeed. Now that KSP has a budget mode, safe missions to test feasibility with almost no scientific payload became more interesting.
If they're trying for a geocentric orbit around Mars they're going to have problems. I suspect an areocentric orbit is the goal.
I'm sure he was thinking of a stationary or synchronous orbit anyway, which is a bit more specific than areocentric :P
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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.
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.
I guess it's appropriate, but seriously funny.
If there is one thing India has a lot of experience in it is remote support.
No brain, no pain.
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....
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.
You are not authorized to orbit my nipples.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.