ISRO Has Contingency Plan For Mars Orbit Insertion

BANGALORE: The Indian space agency has a contingency plan to insert its spacecraft into Martian orbit Sep 24 in case its main engine fails to re-start and fire, a senior official said recently.

"In case the main liquid engine of 440 Newton (power) fails to re-start and fire to put the spacecraft (orbiter) into the intended Mars orbit, we will use the small eight thrusters of 22 Newton each located beneath the engine for orientation to salvage the mission," Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) scientific secretary V. Koteswara Rao told reporters here.

The 475 kg spacecraft, with five scientific experiments on board, will enter the Mars sphere of influence Sep 22 after a 300-day voyage from the earth.

The liquid apogee engine (LAM) was switched off Dec 4, 2013 after the spacecraft left the earth's sphere of influence and entered into the helios-centric (sun's) orbit to cruise 666 million km towards Mars during the past nine months.

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