Mars Orbiter

by indophile Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:55 pm

Same so close to earth around 4:50. It was just at 71 km altitude. Then it started picking up altitude again. The published apogee was 271 km. kya ho raha hai?

by Seva Lamberdar Thu Nov 14, 2013 9:12 am

"Mars mission next step: Apogee to be raised to 2,00,000 km" ....

HYDERABAD: If orbit-raising of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) to an apogee height of 1,18,642 km on November 12 was cause for celebration, there's more to come.
The apogee of the MOM will soon be raised to 2,00,000 km. For the uninitiated, apogee is the farthest point in the orbital plane of a satellite around the earth - calculated from the centre of the earth. The perigee is the nearest point.

After overcoming a hiccup in its fourth orbit-raising manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had increased the apogee from 778,276 km to 1,18,642 km.

According to Isro scientists, the next orbit raising will take the spacecraft to apogee height of about two lakh km. While the intended apogee will be 1,92,000 km, scientists expect the apogee to be raised up to two lakh km.

"After that, the desired departure conditions will arrive on December 1st and Trans-Mars Injection manoeuvre is scheduled," Isro scientists informed.

When the planned orbit-raising from 71,623 km took the apogee to only 78,276 km there was concern about how the MOM was doing. Putting to rest all speculation, ISRO had announced that the spacecraft was in normal health.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Mars-mission-next-step-Apogee-to-be-raised-to-200000-km/articleshow/25762053.cms

by indophile Thu Nov 14, 2013 9:31 am

I just checked. The altitude is around 111K km, and increasing. I may not be able to catch the apogee because I need to step out for a little while.

LOCAL TIME:	09:28:32
UTC:	14:28:32
LATITUDE:	18.88
LONGITUDE:	-45.07
ALTITUDE [km]:	111546.53
ALTITUDE [mi]:	69311.8
SPEED [km/s]:	7.54
SPEED [mi/s]:	4.69
AZIMUTH:	116.8	ESE
ELEVATION:	+54.1
RA:	15h 8m 37s
DEC:

by Seva Lamberdar Thu Nov 14, 2013 9:52 am

Incidentally, for those who don't know this, the height of apogee for the space probe (MOM) being of main interest currently is due to the fact that at apogee the spacecraft has the lowest speed, which makes it possible to get the most in terms of orbital transfer by spending the least amount of energy at apogee.

by indophile Thu Nov 14, 2013 4:07 pm

I tracked it see it hit the apogee at 117,940 km around 4 PM EST. The announced number was about 117,100 km.

by harharmahadev Thu Nov 14, 2013 4:20 pm

Seva Lamberdar wrote:Incidentally, for those who don't know this, the height of apogee for the space probe (MOM) being of main interest currently is due to the fact that at apogee the spacecraft has the lowest speed, which makes it possible to get the most in terms of orbital transfer by spending the least amount of energy at apogee.

Do you mean apoji?

by Seva Lamberdar Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:06 am

indophile wrote:I tracked it see it hit the apogee at 117,940 km around 4 PM EST. The announced number was about 117,100 km.

I think when you were talking yesterday about the orbiter coming very close to the Earth, 71 km or so, that must be the point of perigee which is the closest point to the Earth for a spacecraft in an elliptical orbit (with maximum velocity for spacecraft) and where the small thrusters are fired to elongate the spacecraft's orbit, resulting in apogee moving as far away as possible from the Earth. Once the apogee is quite far from Earth and the spacecraft at such location (apogee) has the least gravitational influence due to Earth, another set of thrusters will be fired to send the spacecraft on the inter-planetary trajectory (to Mars).

by indophile Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:19 am

I wonder if the website allows you to track it once the orbiter leaves the earth's gravitational pull. With Chandrayaan it did, but Mars is too far away, and there are new satellites from various countries being put into the earth orbit almost every day.

by Seva Lamberdar Fri Nov 15, 2013 2:15 pm

indophile wrote:I wonder if the website allows you to track it once the orbiter leaves the earth's gravitational pull. With Chandrayaan it did, but Mars is too far away, and there are new satellites from various countries being put into the earth orbit almost every day.

It depends on ISRO whether it wants to make such tracking possible by public. In any case, as the spacecraft moves farther and farther away from Earth towards Mars, there will a delay (several minutes eventually) in the signal received on Earth about the location etc. of spacecraft, resulting in the time delay in tracking.

by indophile Fri Nov 15, 2013 3:01 pm

Don't mind the 20-minute time delay if only we could track it. I've a suspicion we won't be able to do it because ISRO itself would use assistance from U.S monitoring stations for deep space tracking of Mangalyaan.

by Seva Lamberdar Sat Nov 16, 2013 12:06 pm

Mars mission: Isro performs last orbit-raising manoeuvre

CHENNAI: The Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) on Saturday performed the last of the five orbit-raising manoeuvre on its Mars Orbiter in the early hours, raising the apogee (farthest point from Earth) of the spacecraft to over 1.92 lakh km.

"The fifth orbit-raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 01:27am (IST).. with a burn time of 243.5 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in apogee is from 1,18,642 km to 1,92,874 km," Isro said.

In the series of five orbit-raising manoeuvre with a supplementary operation after the fourth one, the space agency had raised the apogee of the spacecraft to over 1.92 lakh km.
Mars mission: Isro performs last orbit-raising manoeuvre

After the successful completion of these operations, the Mars Orbiter Mission is expected to take on the "crucial event" of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42am on December 1. It will reach the orbit of the red planet by September 24, 2014 after taking on a voyage of over 10 months...........

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Mars-mission-Isro-performs-last-orbit-raising-manoeuvre/articleshow/25862187.cms

by rawemotions Sun Nov 17, 2013 11:46 pm

I presume, the biggest challenge here is to factor in effects of Gravity of the Moon and Earth and Sun on the spacecraft as it is in an elliptical orbit around the Earth.

As it hurtles towards Mars, at some point the effects of Earth's gravity becomes reduced and those from Mars increases and possibly even Jupiter's pull because of its huge mass. I presume this also would be a challenge.

by Seva Lamberdar Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:16 am

rawemotions wrote:I presume, the biggest challenge here is to factor in effects of Gravity of the Moon and Earth and Sun on the spacecraft as it is in an elliptical orbit around the Earth.

As it hurtles towards Mars, at some point the effects of Earth's gravity becomes reduced and those from Mars increases and possibly even Jupiter's pull because of its huge mass. I presume this also would be a challenge.

There are many challanges, influences and uncertainties when the spacecraft is on the inter-planetary trajectory, but that usually does not need corrections to the orbit / trajectory of the spacecraft until it is in the close proximity of its destination (e.g. Mars in the case of 'manglaayam') or another intermediate massive object (such as the Jupiter for a spacecraft heading to the Saturn).

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