ISRO Has Contingency Plan For Mars Orbit Insertion

The 450-crore ($70 million) ambitious Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was launched November 5, 2013, on board a polar rocket from spaceport Sriharikota off Bay of Bengal, about 80 km northeast of Chennai, and inserted into the trans-Martian orbit (solar orbit) Dec 1.

The space agency uses the LAM engines to insert its communication and other utility satellites in the geosynchronous orbits.

"If we miss the opportunity to insert the spacecraft into the Mars orbit using the LAM engine in 24 minutes, we will use the eight thrusters to carry out the contingency in a longer duration though the spacecraft may not get into the intended orbit," Rao noted.

Of the 51 missions to Mars by the American, Russian and European space agencies over the decades, at least nine of them failed to insert their spacecraft into the Martian orbit.

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