Με επιτυχία η πρώτη ινδική αποστολή στον Άρη

Η Ινδία είναι η πρώτη ασιατική χώρα που θέτει σκάφος σε τροχιά γύρω από τον κόκκινο πλανήτη

Ο ινδικός δορυφόρος Mangalyaan εκτοξεύτηκε τον Νοέμβριο του 2013 και, παρά τα προβλήματα που αντιμετώπισε στο αρχικό σκέλος του ταξιδιού, τα κατάφερε και τέθηκε σε τροχιά γύρο από τον κόκκινο πλανήτη. 

H πρώτη αποστολή της Ινδίας στον Άρη χρειάστηκε μόλις δύο χρόνια προετοιμασίας και στοίχισε συνολικά μόλις 73 εκατομμύρια δολάρια, σχεδόν δέκα φορές λιγότερο από τον δορυφόρο Maven της NASA.

Στην ιστορία της διαστημικής εξερεύνησης, περίπου τα δύο τρίτα των αποστολών στον Άρη έχουν αποτύχει. Η επιτυχία του Μangalyaan τονώνει την ινδική διαστημική υπερηφάνεια, ιδιαίτερα μετά την αποτυχία μιας αντίστοιχης κινεζικής αποστολής το 2011.
Το Mangalyaan φέρει πέντε επιστημονικά όργανα, συνολικού βάρους μόλις 15 κιλών, με τα οποία θα χαρτογραφήσει την επιφάνεια και θα εξετάσει τη σύσταση της ατμόσφαιρας.
[protothema.gr]
24/9/14
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• India makes history with first spaceship to orbit Mars

India triumphed in its first interplanetary mission, placing a satellite into orbit around Mars on Wednesday morning and catapulting the country into an elite club of deep-space explorers. Scientists broke into wild cheers as the orbiter's engines completed 24 minutes of burn time and maneuvered into its designated place around the red planet. The success of India's Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, brings India into an elite club of Martian explorers that includes United States, the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union.
"Today Mars has met MOM. MOM never disappoints. History has been created today," Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced amid applause at the Indian Space Research Organisation command center in Bangalore."We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation." "We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few," Modi said, congratulating both the scientists and "all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion." The Indian Space and Research Organisation described the mission as flawless. The success marks a milestone for the space program in demonstrating that it can conduct complex missions and act as a global launch pad for commercial, navigational and research satellites. It's also a major feat for the developing country of 1.2 billion people, most of whom are poor. At the same time, India has a robust scientific and technical educational system that has produced millions of software programmers, engineers and doctors, catapulting many into the middle class. More than half the world's previous attempts — 23 out of 41 missions — have failed, including one by Japan in 1999. The United States had its first success with a 1964 flyby by a spacecraft called Mariner 4, returning 21 images of the surface of the planet. The former Soviet Union reached the planet in 1971, and the European Space Agency in 2003. India was particularly proud that MOM, a 1,350-kilogram (nearly 3,000-pound) satellite, was developed with homegrown technology and for a bargain price of about $75 million. NASA's much larger Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or Maven, which reached its position around the red planet on Sunday, cost nearly 10 times as much at $671 million.

• MOM will now circle the planet for at least six months on an elliptical path that gets within 365 kilometers (227 miles) of the planet's surface at its closest and 80,000 kilometers (49,700 miles) at its farthest.

Five solar-powered instruments will gather data that will help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on Mars in large quantities. It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes.
None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist.

• There are three more satellites already circling the planet — NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and the ESA's Mars Express. On the Martian surface, NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers are rolling across rocky terrain. 

India has said the spacecraft — also called Mangalyaan, meaning "Mars craft" in Hindi — is chiefly meant to showcase the country's ability to design, plan, manage and operate a deep-space mission. India has already conducted dozens of successful satellite launches, including sending up the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which discovered key evidence of water on the Moon in 2008.
AP
 haaretz.com
24/9/14
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Related:

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• Indian Mars mission suffers glitch but 'no setback' ... 

• India’s First Mars Probe Successfully Leaves Earth's Orbit....