Yesterday when I was going through my facebook account,I happened to see a posted by one among my friends, “MOM LIFTED SUCCESSFULLY”.At first I was little confused,what rubbish is he posting.Later I came across that MOM is the acronym for Mars Orbiter Mission,India’s first Interplanetary mission.
I was in 9th or 10th grade when ISRO launched the Chandrayaan-I mission.Those days our school assembly had speeches about Chandryaan only.I also got a chance to speak about Chandrayaan during one roll-call time.I guess now the assemblies and roll-calls there would be flooding with Mangalyaan speeches.
Mars Orbiter Mission,informaly called as Mangalyaan,is India’s first Interplanetary mission.The MOM probe was successfully launched onto the Earth orbit by the launch vehicle PSLV-XL C25.The probe was lifted off from the first launch pad of Sriharikota by IST 02:38PM and was launched into Earth Orbit by IST 03:28PM.The launch mass of the spacecraft is about 1,350kg,dry mass is about 500kg and payload mass is about 15kg.The Mission duration is estimated about 300 days.
Wikipedia states the primary objective of the mission is to showcase India’s capability in rocket launching systems and spacecraft building technologies (മനസിലായില്ലേ ,ഷോ ഷോ .. :-P).But ISRO states the primary objective as to develop the technologies required for designing,planning,management and operations of Interplanetary mission.The Scientific objective of the mission is to explore the surface features,morphology,mineralogy and Martian atmosphere of Mars with the help of indigenous scientific instruments.
If the mission becomes a successful one,then ISRO will become the fourth space agency to explore Mars,after RFSA,NASA and ESA.Waiting for that proud moment.
Thanks to the internet, any fool can write blogs about rocket science these days 🙂
Better than simply sitting in the home with an Internet connection…