Tuesday, November 5, 2013

A Pitcture Perfect Launch for Mars Orbiter Mission

How to get to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond?  
Many ways and the paths are not always the same.
Shoot straight and with enough push, hit the target in the shortest path.
Sling your stone and use various objects to help you along the way. 
The path not so straight and the time, not so short. 
With care, you may still hit the target.  Time will tell.

The Indian Space Agency has just launched a Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).  
It will take some time, but no one on board and instruments can endure.
-LRK-

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A Pitcture Perfect Launch for Mars Orbiter Mission
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
2013/11/05 04:11 CST

It was well worth staying up late to watch the PSLV carrying the Mars Orbiter Mission soar off its launch pad today. All four stages of the launch vehicle performed right to expectations, placing the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit of Earth with a perigee of 246.9 kilometers and an apogee of 23,566 kilometers, extremely close to the predicted orbit. I was taken aback by how quickly the rocket shot into the air. I made an animated gif of screen caps.
[Check out Planetary Org  web site - LRK -]
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Info from Universe Today with pictures and updates.
- LRK -

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India’s First Mars Mission Launches Flawlessly on Historic Journey to the Red Planet

by KEN KREMER on NOVEMBER 5, 2013

India flawlessly launched its first ever mission to Mars today (Nov. 5) to begin a history making ten month long interplanetary voyage to the Red Planet that’s aimed at studying the Martian atmosphere and searching for methane after achieving orbit.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) thundered to space atop the nations four stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) precisely on time at 14:38 hrs IST (9:08 UTC, 4:08 a.m. EST) from the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota, off India’s east coast.
“Our journey to Mars begins now!” announced an elated ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan at the ISRO spaceport during a live broadcast of MOM’s launch from the mission control center. “We achieved orbit and we can all be proud.”

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MOM is the first of two new Mars orbiter science probes from Earth blasting off for the Red Planet this November. Half a globe away, NASA’s $671 Million MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch barely two weeks after MOM on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/106127/indias-first-mars-mission-launches-flawlessly-on-historic-journey-to-the-red-planet/#ixzz2jn86MGsv

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Pictures and updates from Space . com

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Liftoff! India's First Mars Probe Launches Toward the Red Planet

by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer   |   November 05, 2013 05:00am ET
India's first-ever mission to Mars launched into space today (Nov. 5), beginning the country's first interplanetary mission to explore the solar system
With a thunderous roar, India's Mars Orbiter Mission rocketed into space at 4:08 a.m. EST (0908 GMT) from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, where the local time will be 2:38 p.m. in the afternoon. An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched the probe on its 300-day trek into orbit around the Red Planet.
"The journey has only just begun," said ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan after the successful launch. [India's First Mars Mission (Photos)]
Less than an hour after liftoff,  Radhakrishnan reported that India's Mars probe successfully entered a staging orbit around Earth. Mars Orbiter Mission director Kunhi Krishnan describing the launch as a start to a "grand and glorious" mission.
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And comments as to the value of such a Mars mission.
- LRK -

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For ISRO, chance to hide GSLV failures
Johnson T A : Chennai, Tue Nov 05 2013, 05:32 hrs

A successful launch of the Mars mission, set to be launched on Tuesday, will help Isro hide away a series of failures that its has experienced in recent times, particularly the setbacks in the development of its heavy lift Geo Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) which it needs to be in the premier league of space nations.
The GSLV programme which will help Isro put heavy communication satellites of the 2000 kg plus category in space, a capability it now lacks, and crucial to Chandrayaan 2 — the space agency's full fledged exploratory mission to moon — has been floundering in recent times with a launch scheduled for August 19 aborted after a leakage was detected in its systems.
Since 2001, in seven attempts to fly the GSLV — which will give India a leg up in the nearly 2 billion dollar commercial communication satellite business — Isro has had complete success only in two flights in the early stages of the development of the rocket technology.
One of the vocal critics of the move to go in for the Mars mission at the cost of focussing on the GSLV development and the Chandrayaan 2 mission has been former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair who has labelled the Mars mission "useless'' and merely a "showpiece event''.
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Thanks for looking up with me.  
- LRK -




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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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