Mangalyaan / (MOM)

 Nation: India

Objective(s): Mars orbit

Spacecraft: Mars Orbiter Spacecraft

Spacecraft Mass: 1,337 kg

Mission Design and Management: ISRO

Launch Vehicle: PSLV-XL (no. C25)

Launch Date and Time: 5 November 2013 / 09:08 UT

Launch Site: SHAR / PSLV pad

Scientific Instruments:

1. Mars color camera (MCC)
2. thermal infrared imaging spectrometer (TIS)
3. methane sensor for Mars (MSM)
4. Mars exospheric neutral composition analyzer (MENCA)

5. Lyman alpha photometer (LAP)

Results:

India’s first interplanetary spacecraft was designed and built in a relatively short period of time, with a total
development time of 4 years and
2 months, although official government approval came as late as August
 2012. The main spacecraft bus was
 a modified I-1 bus used on the
lunar Chandrayaan-1 mission.

 The mission was essentially a technology
demonstrator although it carried
 a set of modest scientific instruments to study the surface features,
 morphology, mineralogy,
and Martian atmosphere. With the mission, India accomplished a remarkable feat, becoming only the fourth
 nation or agency
 to have a spacecraft orbit
Mars, after the former Soviet Union, the United States, and the European Space
 Agency.

Japan had tried and failed,
while a Chinese rocket had yet to
launch a probe to Mars (although its Yinghuo-1 orbiter launched by
the Russians failed to leave Earth orbit
due to the malfunctioning Russian
upper stage). The name Mangalyaan was formally attached to the mission
before launch while in the
development period the spacecraft was known variously as the Mars Orbiter
 Spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Satellite,
 or the Mars Orbiter Mission.

Mangalyaan entered an initial orbit around Earth at 251 × 23,892 kilometers at 19.4° inclination.
The mission profile to Mars
 involved six engine burns
(the fourth on 10  November was partially successful) over a month
 in progressive larger Earth
orbits to accumulate sufficient velocity to escape Earth’s sphere of
influence. A seventh engine
burn lasting over 22 minutes, beginning at 19:19 UT on 30 November,
 inserted Mangalyaan into
heliocentric orbit. On the way to Mars, the spacecraft conducted
 three mid-course corrections (on
11 December 2013, 11 June, and 22 September) before a successful
 burn (lasting over 23 minutes)
of the main 44.9 kgf thrust engine put the probe into Mars orbit
on 24 September 2014.

 This was a highly elliptical
orbit at 421.7 × 76,993.6 kilometers with an orbital period of
nearly 73 hours.
Mangalyaan returned its first global image of Mars, a spectacular picture
captured by the MCC instrument, on 28
 September 2014 from an altitude of 74,580 kilometers with about a 4-kilometer resolution that
 showed various morphological features and thin clouds
in the Martian atmosphere. The
ground team maneuvered the spacecraft to avoid a possible
 encounter with Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) which passed
 by Mars on 19 October 2014,
one of seven spacecraft on or around Mars that had to take measures
 to prevent damage.

The comet passed by Mars
 at a range of about 132,000 kilometers shedding material around Mars,
 some at a velocity of
 56 kilometers/second putting many of these spacecraft in danger.
 Mangalyaan’s instruments
 remained fully operational through late 2014, and on 1 January
 2015 ISRO scientists marked 100 days of successful operations around Mars.

Mission planners were confident
that the spacecraft would
meet its planned lifetime of six months or 180 days in orbit around Mars.
As with many other spacecraft
 in and around Mars, Mangalyaan was subjected to a communications
 blackout in June 2015
when Mars’ orbit took it behind the Sun relative to Earth.

 Mangalyaan commemorated a successful operational year
orbiting Mars in September
2015 although at the time, scientific results from its instruments
had yet to be publicly shared. The
13 pictures released by that time were largely taken in September
 and October 2014 although,
because of MOM’s unique orbit, they show the kind of wide-angle
 images have rarely been seen
from Mars orbit.

 Finally, in March 2016, scientists
published the first results (in Geophysical Research
Letters) of the MENCA instrument. Further results
from other instruments were made available in the
fall of 2016. Newly released images included some of the most
spectacular views from orbit showing
many surface patterns.

ISRO controllers changed  Mangalyaan’s
orbit as a strategy to avoid the eclipse season when the spacecraft
would be in Mars’ shadow for as
much as 8 hours per day. The burn used about 20 kilograms of
propellant, leaving 13 kilograms
remaining for further maneuvers. It is hoped that the spacecraft
can transmit data until 2020.