Sun to block communication between Mangalyaan and ISRO in June
Bengaluru, Jan 5: Come June and the ISRO team would lost its communication with its ambitious space project Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) for 15 days.
According to report in Times of India, former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan said at the Indian Science Congress that this will be the first such long communication break between ISRO team and MOM since its launch on Nov 5, 2013.
Radhakrishnan
further
told
that
the
blackout
will
be
the
result
of
an
eclipse
and
it
will
be
from
June
8
to
22.
MOM
project
director
Subbiah
Arunan
said
that
the
blackout
will
happen
because
the
Sun
will
come
between
Earth
and
Mars,
blocking
the
view
of
the
red
planet.
He
said
that
during
the
blackout,
data
cannot
be
transmitted
to
the
spacecraft
or
downlinked.
Also read: [Mangalyaan completes 100 days in Mars orbit]
"There have been many manoeuvres when there has been a communication blackout, but this is the first time it is happening for as long as 14 day," Arunan has been quoted as saying in the report.
The Mars Orbiter launched on November 5, 2013 onboard ISRO's PSLV C25 from Sriharikota entered the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 after a nine-month long odyssey, making India the first country in the world to succeed in such inter-planetary mission in the maiden attempt itself.
Since then, the spacecraft has been sending data, including pictures of the terrain of the Red planet to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which are being received at Bangalore and being sent to Space Application Centre and Physical Research Laboratory, both located at Ahmedabad for analysis.
OneIndia News