I don't know the answer, but two thoughts come immediately to mind. One, checkouts and instrument commissioning don't seem to take all that long -- a few days, at most a week. Two, Earth orbit may not be a good place for deep-space probes to spend lots of time; there are the radiation belts, at perigee they're encountering Earth's exosphere, and so forth. Earth satellites can survive for decades, but they're designed for it. It's possible that a week in Earth orbit might strip several weeks of the potential lifespan of a Mars orbiter.


Doug M.

"The second and third such operations would be made tomorrow and on Saturday to raise the mission apogee to 40,000 km and 71,650 km respectively. The fourth and fifth operations would be performed to raise the apogee of 1,00,000 km and 1,92,000 km on November 11 and 16 respectively. After the successful completion of these operations, the mission is expected to take on the “crucial event” of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42 am on December 1."

http://www.firstpost.com/india/closer-to-m...rce=ref_article

Glad that the ISRO launch of MOM has been successful. I have some info on the s/c gleaned from the Internet.

MOM is based on a modifieed I-1000 satellite bus, first used in the METSAT-1 weather satellite of 2002, which was later renamed Kalpana-1 to honor the late Indian-Amercian astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died abord space shuttle Columbia.


Rob

Most interplanetary spacecraft are launched into a parking orbit, but they only stay in it for a few minutes before injection. AFAIK there are no delta V savings for the MOM mission profile, it's mostly because the spacecraft engine doesn't have enough thrust to do the injection in one burn.

As for checkout, there's plenty of time to do it in cruise, and it's not like you can go up and fix it if you stay in Earth orbit anyway.

Moreover LEO is a poor place to checkout because you have rapid day/night cycles, and any one DSN pass would only be a few 10's of minutes, rather than a more typical 8 hours. And it's quite possible that LEO on an LGA is a poorer downlink than cruise on an HGA.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...er-mission.html
Looks like burn four was not completed as planned. They're going to make up the shortfall tomorrow.
This method seems pretty flexible...

Detail issue explanation in today's ISRO press release.

According to info here MOM still has 4 kg fuel reserve today thanks to precise orbit insertion after the launch.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...ion-update.html

A schematic of the propulsion system plumbing would be needed to completely make sense of this.

Normally, redundant latch valves are in parallel so that either one or the other can control flow to the engine (and there are normally-open pyro valves in the lines that can shut one leg down if its valve sticks open.) I haven't heard of needing or wanting both open since if they behaved differently they wouldn't be truly redundant (a crude form of throttling?). Perhaps in trying this there was some flow-splitting problem and the flow rates weren't what they wanted. At any rate it seems a bit odd -- hopefully this afternoon's burn will go well.

And it did go well! Apogee now 118, 642 kilometers.

http://isro.org/mars/updates.aspx

Some news on AW&ST blog: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?i...3_p0-636048.xml

5th burn's ok too: http://isro.org/mars/updates.aspx
16-11-2013

• The fifth orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 01:27 hrs(IST) on Nov 16, 2013, with a burn Time of 243.5 seconds has been successfully completed.The observed change in Apogee is from 118642km to 192874km.

if I got the math right, it will now pass three perigees without any further maneuver (on the 19th, 23rd and 27th) and will then leave Earth orbit bound to mars on the fourth perigee, around 1 UTC on December 1.
also note that instruments, including camera, are expected to be tested in this 3.8-day orbit. expect the first pictures of Earth in a few days!

First pics; looking good...

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...er-mission.html

A quite interesting article on some of the scientific instruments, Men behind Mars dreams.

Some info passed on by a friend from India.

"On Wednesday 27 November 2013 over 200 scientists involved in India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) were glued to their workstations and the giant screens at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network’s Mission Operations Complex.
They were monitoring the movement of the MOM spacecraft as it completed its penultimate perigee to go around the Earth before it embarks on a 680 million km long interplanetary voyage to the Red Planet.
Four days ahead of the trans-Mars injection, the scientists are confident that the complex operation, which is scheduled for December 1 at 12.49 am, will successfully enable the spacecraft to embark on a 300-day long journey to Mars.
The trans-Mars injection is to be carried out December 1, which involve complex combination of navigation and propulsion technologies, governed by the gravity of Sun and Mars, and assisted by the 440 N liquid engine, the space agency has also has planned to carry out four mid-course corrections. The first one is scheduled on December 11 and three more next in April, August and September 2014.
During this phase, the 32-meters deep space antenna and the 18-meters antenna terminal at the Indian deep space network located at Byalalu village will be providing deep space support and ensure that the spacecraft is put into the designated Martian orbit.
Upon completion of its 300 journey, the spacecraft is expected to be in Mars orbit on September 24 next year.
Looking at the history of Mars missions, no country so far has achieved the success of the mission in first attempt; Russia made 10 attempts, US succeeded only in its sixth and China is yet to enjoy success.
If ISRO manages to successfully put the spacecraft in the Martian orbit, India will be the first country to achieve this in its maiden attempt.
Let us hold our nerves and wish the mission every success."

I suppose ESA isnt a country, so maybe this is literally correct as written, but surely is inaccurate in spirit - Mars Express succeeded at ESA's first attempt....

Japan's Nozomi got close - it's bid to go into Mars orbit had to be abandoned (it made a flyby only, having suffered many tribulations en route, largely due to radiation damage during a long cruise necessitated by the underburn of its first attempt at Trans-Mars Injection.) So MOM's next step is an important one - wishing them luck !

Technically, Mars Express and Beagle 2 were launched together as a single mission, so the statement that no country has been fully successful in its first Mars mission is accurate. And the US was successful in its second attempt to orbit Mars (Mariner 8 was the first intended Mars orbiter, Mariner 9 was a success).

Yeah -- I'm not sure where they get the line that the "US succeeded only in its sixth," when the first two American probes aimed at Mars were Mariners 3 and 4 -- and Mariner 3 didn't so much fail at Mars as it ended up on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, having failed to make its parking orbit. The next complete failure of an American Mars probe was Mariner 8, for the same reason as Mariner 3 -- it failed to reach orbit. In between those two failures, Mariners 4, 6 and 7 all completed their missions.

After Mariner 9's success, the next American failure was the Mars Observer, followed by the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander (all of which were lost at or approaching Mars). All other American Mars missions have been rather highly successful. The actual American won-loss on Mars probes is 15 successes, 5 failures. This counts the Vikings as one mission each (you could make a case for them being 4 missions, two landers and two orbiters, but I just counted them as one each for a total of 2) and it counts MPL as one mission, not splitting out the Deep Space 2 hard landers. Basically, of 20 American launches to Mars, five have failed and 15 succeeded.

-the other Doug

Reports in Indian mass media are no more accurate than ones in American mass media. The problem with MOM is compounded by the fact that it's been ISRO's modus operandi to release information only to the media rather than do press releases on their own website. They've changed that somewhat recently, but there's still a lot of information that comes out about MOM that is filtered through the media first, often with a loss of signal. So yeah, that's wrong. Further discussion of how it's wrong belongs in the Inaccuracy in Reporting thread.

As Emily said, the media get it wrong (Who knew!?!). The emails my friend is sending are from reports appearing in his local newspaper.

actually, M3 ended in a wrong solar orbit stuck under its aerodynamic shroud

Facebook page here posting updates: https://www.facebook.com/isromom

Mars insertion burn has begun. fingers crossed!

Halfway complete (crossed perigee).
So far, so good...

All well so far, it seems. Fingers crossed indeed!

Burn complete.

The burn has been completed - apparently it was successful but more details should appear soon. Fingers crossed...

From their Twitter:

Looks good

Edit: Liquid Engine propels #Mangalyaan into Mars Transfer Trajectory & #India into interplanetary space !

Via twitter:
@Mangalyaan1: Trans-Mars injection of #Mangalyaan has been completed successfully.

Sounds promising.
Only a few hundred million kilometres to go and then MOI. Simple
Good luck!

They just crossed lunar orbit. All new territory for India from here on...

MARS COLOR CAMERA ONBOARD MARS ORBITER MISSION: SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES & EARTH IMAGING RESULTS

Hi, i'm trying to get some information about the MSM insturment. Does someone know how accurate is? More than the SAM instrument that Curiosity have? Thanks!

Various articles put it at detecting greater than 10 parts per billion concentration, give or take.

The SAC Courier of January 2014 contains a discussion of the MCC, TIS and MSM instruments. Preliminary analysis of MSM data collected above the northern Sahara showed a standard error of less than 100 ppb.

The Indian spacecraft Mangalyaan on way to Mars is aproaching soon, now it is away less than 9 millions kilometers from Mars and it will be injected into Mars atmosphere on September 24. Up to now, everything goes well.

Mangalyaan on trak, no path correction in August

Hopefully not injected into Mars' atmosphere, unless it aims to repeat the feat of Mars Climate Orbiter almost exactly 15 years ago:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/

MOM had a successful trajectory correction on June 11, and is due to make another this coming Sunday 14 Sept.

The plan is for Mars orbit insertion on September 24, two days after Maven.


India MOM updates

MOM mission overview

Apparently the Mid-course correction (MCC) planned for yesterday (14 Sept) was cancelled as being unnecessary due to accuracy of previous MCC.

ISRO is stating today that time-tagged commands to execute Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) are uploading and verification is in progress.

MOI is scheduled for Wed Sep 24, early morning IST (India Standard Time).

The MCC (or TCM - Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre) number 4 planned for 14 Sept has been bumped to 22 Sept. It will also serve as a test firing of the main
engine for the Mars orbit insertion 2 days later.

On its current trajectory, Mars arrival altitude is 723 km. TCM 4 will tweak it down to 515 km.

Mars orbit insertion burn start times:

India Standard Time : 24 Sept, 7.30am.
UK summer time : 24 Sept, 3.00 am
GMT / UTC: 24 Sept , 2.00am
USA New York (daylight saving): 23 Sept, 10pm.

Is anyone aware if MOM's MOI will be live streamed anywhere?
Perhaps an Indian TV network streaming events online?

Any thoughts?

Via twitter:

Thanks Emily.
We'll be covering it for the public in our visitor centre in Canberra using that feed plus the simulation in Eyes on the Solar System.

Plus of course our antennas will be the providing communications coverage for MOM's MOI.

Busy week

MOM has successfully performed its final course correction, which also served to test-fire the main engine for MOI.

India MOM engine firing press release

MOI burn start time is now advanced by 13 mins from previously given (above) - i.e. 07:17 IST Wed 24 Sept instead of 07:30... and so on for other time zones.

FYI, the NSF guys are doing their usual eeeeexcellent live coverage here:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29440.810

Many congratulations to ISRO on Mangalyaan entering Mars orbit. India becomes the fourth nation/region to successfully reach Mars.

MOD NOTE: New early orbital operations thread here.