Bangalore:
India made history by successfully placing its spacecraft in orbit around Mars, becoming the first country in the world to succeed in such an inter-planetary mission in the maiden attempt itself.
At 7.17 AM, the 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) sizzled with life as it burnt along with the thrusters to slow down the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft to be captured by the Red Planet.
“MOM has met Mangal,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said annnouncing the mission’s success, after nerve-wracking final moments at the command centre of Indian Space Research Organisation here.
Modi, who witnessed the operation along with the space scientists, said the odds were stacked against “us with only 21 of the 51 missions to Mars being successful,” but “we have prevailed.”
An elated Prime Minister patted the back of ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan and complimented the Indian space scientists for making space history.
With the success of “Mangalyaan”, India has become the first country in the world to go to Mars in the very first try. European, American and Russian probes have managed to orbit or land on the planet, but after several attempts.
Mars Orbiter Insertion was carried out automatically by commands loaded onto the spacecraft after its velocity was slowed down from 22.1 km per second to 4.4 km per second to be captured by the Martian orbit.
The spacecraft had entered the Martian neighbourhood on Monday.
At the time of MOM’s orbital insertion, its signals took about 12 minutes and 28 seconds to travel to Earth for reception by NASA’s Deep Space Network Stations in Canberra and Goldstone that relayed the data in real time to ISRO’s station here.
The first sign of success in the final moments came when ISRO announced that burn of engines on India’s Mars orbiter had been confirmed. “All engines of Mars orbiter are going strong. Burn confirmed,” said ISRO signalling that history was in the making.
Igniting the main engine was critical as it had been lying in slumber for about 300 days and was woken up briefly for four seconds on Monday.
