India has become one of the space superpowers. Indian scientists managed to solve a very difficult problem - they put their own satellite into Martian orbit. As a result, India became the first country in the world that managed to realize its mission to Mars the first time. At the same time, the spacecraft launched by the Indians called "Mangalyaan" (Mangalyaan in translation from Hindi - "Martian ship) managed to set two more records.
The Indian probe can be safely attributed to a kind of low-cost airline. The golden-colored ship cost India only $ 74 million (build and launch). While its American counterpart called Maven cost 10 times more. But that's not all. The Indian ship was designed in no time. It took Indian engineers only 15 months to do this. On Wednesday morning, September 24, 2014, the Indian probe, the size of a small car and weighing just over 1 ton, managed to gain a foothold in Mars orbit. Launches of low-budget satellites to the red planet were carried out earlier, but India was able to complete the task with a rare success for these missions, says the head of the Institute of Space Policy Ivan Moiseev.
Already on September 25, the first images of Mars were published on the network, which were taken by the Indian apparatus Mangalyaan, according to BBC News. Photos of Mars were taken from a distance of 7, 3 thousand kilometers. On them you can see craters in the form of dark indentations on the orange surface of the planet. The images taken by the device were published on the official pages of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), for example, on Facebook.
According to the world's media, other countries have made a total of about 40 attempts to launch probes to Mars, of which only 20 were successful. The Indian probe Mangalyaan on Monday, September 22, checked the operation of the engine, and on Wednesday at about 6:15 Moscow time, it successfully entered the orbit of the red planet, simultaneously becoming the first Indian-made spacecraft that was launched to another planet. The tasks of this spacecraft include photographing the surface of Mars, studying its atmosphere, developing technologies for carrying out new flights to the red planet. Also, the satellite must establish whether there is methane on Mars and whether there was water on the planet. It is assumed that the spacecraft carrying 15 kg of scientific equipment will operate in the orbit of the red planet for about 6 months, the maximum program will last 10 months.
The Mangalyan satellite was launched on November 5, 2013. The launch was carried out from the territory of the Satish Dhavan Space Center, which is located on the island of Sriharikota, located in the Bay of Bengal. The mission has already become the cheapest one ever sent to the red planet. The figures are $ 74 million, or even $ 67 million, according to Time magazine. Almost simultaneously, the American satellite MAVEN came to Mars after 10 months of flight, as reported by NASA on September 22.
The idea of sending cheap spacecraft to Mars is not new. In our country, the use of devices with a small set of scientific instruments was switched over in the 1980s. At the same time, Russia was very unlucky with two extremely expensive projects. Space stations "Mars-96" in 1996 and "Phobos-Grunt" in 2011 did not fulfill their functions, their launches ended in failure. In the future plans of Russia, according to Ivan Moiseev, is the exploration of the Moon with the help of small stations.
The Indian probe has already begun to explore the atmosphere of the red planet, but its main function is to test technologies that may be needed to carry out a manned flight. The study of Mars today is interesting, without exception, to all space powers, since it will help to answer the question of how our Universe is arranged, emphasized Oleg Vaisberg, an active member of the International Academy of Astronautics.
Mars as a planet is very interesting for terrestrial scientists. It has undergone a great evolution. Mars has a fairly developed atmosphere, water, there is a chance that there was life on the planet, which could survive to this day in some of the simplest forms. In terms of evolution, the red planet is close enough to the Earth, and how our neighbors have evolved is very important for understanding how our own planet has evolved and will continue to develop. In addition, there is an idea to colonize Mars, according to Weisberg, this could happen in 200 or 300 years.
So far, apart from India, only NASA, the European Space Agency and Roskosmos have put their own spacecraft into Mars orbit. Now this summit has been conquered by Indian engineers as well. Their satellite will revolve around the planet, approaching it at the nearest distance of 420 km. Having become the first country to successfully send a mission to Mars on the first try, India is becoming a powerful space power that in the long term can squeeze Russia in the market for commercial launches.
To reach Mars, the Indian probe covered 780 million kilometers in 10 months. The Mission Control Center, located in Bangalore, received confirmation that the spacecraft entered Martian orbit at 7:41 am (local time) on September 24. This event was reported on all local television programs, and the front pages of Indian newspapers were dedicated to it. Even children wrote letters to their parents about the spacecraft's flight to Mars, while in many temples they prayed for the success of the expedition.
The Indian probe turned out to be very cheap. Sending it to Mars cost the treasury 4.5 billion rupees (about $ 74 million), although these costs were criticized by some people against the background of poverty and hunger unbeaten in India. At the same time, the Indian government believes that the launch is very important for the development of modern space technologies, as well as the creation of its own highly developed production and the necessary groundwork for the future. It is worth taking into account the fact that the launch was associated with a high degree of risk - of all launches to Mars, more than half ended in failure.
Today, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to make India a full-fledged player in the space technology market, the total volume of which is estimated by experts at $ 300 billion. At the same time, India will have to compete with China, which has gained momentum, which already has its own heavy launch vehicles. At the same time, the unofficial interplanetary Martian tournament allowed Delhi to test its Polar Sattelite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket, which in the long term could press Russian LVs on the market for commercial launches of various spacecraft. So far, the rocket has a very good launch history, with 26 consecutive successful launches since the first failed. In the course of these launches, 40 foreign satellites have already been launched into Earth's orbit. The Indian rocket is capable of launching 1600 kg of payloads into a 620-kilometer orbit and up to 1050 kg into a transfer geosynchronous orbit. In its standard configuration, the PSLV rocket weighs 295 tons and has a length of 44 meters. The solid-propellant first stage of the Indian rocket today is one of the most powerful in the world, this booster carries 139 tons of fuel.
The Indian Martian spacecraft with a total weight of 1350 kg, having entered an elliptical orbit around Mars, will have to study the composition of the planet's surface, atmosphere and space environment of the red planet. One of the main tasks of the mission is to search for and study methane, which is present in the atmosphere of the fourth planet, as well as to search for its possible sources. A photometer specially installed on the satellite will try to estimate how quickly water evaporates from Mars.
The Indian Mars Exploration Mission was announced in 2012. The acuteness of this project was given by the failure of China, which unsuccessfully launched its interplanetary spacecraft in 2011.
