India To Enter Mars Orbit On September 24

BANGALORE: An Indian spacecraft will enter Mars on September 24 for scientific exploration of the red planet after a 300-day voyage through inter-planetary space, an ISRO official said.

“After cruising through 666-million km across the solar orbit, for over nine months, our spacecraft will be inserted into the Martian orbit on September 24 at 7.30 a.m.," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientific secretary V. Koteswara Rao said here at a preview of the mission’s tryst with the celestial object.

The orbit insertion will take place when the spacecraft will be 423 km from the Martian surface and 215 million km away (radio distance) from the earth.

The ambitious 450-crore ($70 million) Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was launched November 5, 2013 on board a polar rocket from the spaceport Sriharikota off the Bay of Bengal, about 80 km north-east of Chennai.

“India will be the first country in the world to insert a spacecraft into the Martian orbit in its maiden attempt if the operation succeeds and also the first Asian country to reach the red planet’s sphere,” Mr. Rao said.

The ISRO will be the fourth space agency after National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the U.S., Russian Federal Space Agency (RFSA) and European Space Agency (ESA) to have undertaken a mission to Mars.

Incidentally, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Orbiter (MAVEN) will enter the red planet’s orbit Sep 22.

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