Mission Mars: ISRO performs first orbit raising operation

Chennai, Nov 7: The Indian Space Research Organisation on Thursday performed the first orbit raising manoeuvre of the

Orbiter spacecraft, simulating the raising of the apogee of its Mars orbiter which the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) put into earth-bound orbit of 247 km x 23,566 km on Tuesday.

"We started it by 1.17 am and have successfully completed the first orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft. Right now, the computation is going on," an ISRO spokesman said.

The space agency had performed a rehearsal for the first orbit raising manoeuvre at 5.02 AM on Wednesday, ISRO sources said. A series of five orbit raising operations have been scheduled on the Mars mission starting Thursday.

The second and third such operations would be made on Friday 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. ISRO's PSLV C 25 successfully injected the 1,350-kg Mangalyaan Orbiter ( Mars craft ) into orbit around Earth some 44 minutes after a textbook launch at 2.38 PM from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on Tuesday, marking the successful completion of the first stage of the Rs 450-crore mission.

According to a satellite tracking system website www.n2yo.com, the MOM spacecraft had just crossed Central African Republic and was flying over South Sudan as at 10.15 AM (IST).

India's MOM was at a perigee of (closest point from Earth) of 273.5 km and an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 28,746 km with a degree of inclination of 19.2 degree. The International Designator or the NSSDC ID of India s Mars mission is 2013-060A.

The International Designator is the international naming convention for satellites, comprising the launch year, a three-digit incrementing launch number of that year and up to a three letter code representing the sequential identifier of a piece in a launch.

PTI