ISRO today announced that India’s ambitious, Mars Orbiter mission has successfully completed the second Trajectory Correction manoeuver. The second TCM lasted for approximately 16 seconds.
With this TCM, ISRO’s Mangalyaan ( hindi for Marscraft ) is on its way, to reach Mars, and if everything goes as planned, India will become the first Asian nation to achieve such a feat.
The radio commands for this second TCM were sent to the Marscraft through ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at 16:30 hrs. (IST).
Last year, in November, India launched its ambitious Mangalyaan (Hindi for Marscraft), a mars mission to study the Martian atmosphere. One of the main objectives of the first Indian mission to Mars is to develop the technologies required for design, planning, management and operations of an interplanetary mission.
The small spacecraft was launched aboard India’s highly trusted PSLV C-25 rocket. India drew equal appreciation and criticism for the mission. Scientific community appreciated India’s effort of launching such a complex mission aboard a rocket, which is meant for earth missions. ISRO used the slingshot method to throw Mangalyaan into space.
Although being an extremely cheap mission, considering costs which are incurred by NASA for such missions, India still drew criticism for spending such an amount (approx $66 million) on a space mission, when almost half of the country still lives under poverty.
Overall, the project was much appreciated due to the highly complex antennas and space technologies, developed by India in such a short span of time. If successful, India would become the first Asian country to successfully send a mission to planet Mars.
