Update: Mangalyaan's Main Engine Test Fired, Maven In Orbit

William Robinson writes Before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter Mars orbit, Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) scientists reignited the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft's main engine for four seconds as a trial. The liquid apogee motor (LAM) engine has been idle for about 300 days since the spacecraft left the Earth's orbit on a Martian trajectory on December 1, 2013. The short-duration test was to ensure that the engine is in good shape for the 24-minute crucial maneuver on Wednesday." In other Mars mission updates, NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late Sunday after a 442 million-mile journey that began nearly a year ago.

I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[i kan reed]

The wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] for those as ignorant as I am. It's apparently almost entirely a proof of concept that India's space agency can manage an interplanetary orbiter. The mission's main profile seems to be "get into stable geocentric orbit around mars".

I'm sure the atmospheric monitoring tools are scientifically useful to someone though.

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[Thanshin]

Indeed. Now that KSP has a budget mode, safe missions to test feasibility with almost no scientific payload became more interesting.

bald-faced blue-planet invader propeganda

[Thud457]

I won't believe it until I read the official statement from K'breel, leader of the council.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[tomhath]

If they're trying for a geocentric orbit [wikipedia.org] around Mars they're going to have problems. I suspect an areocentric orbit [wikipedia.org] is the goal.

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[X0563511]

I'm sure he was thinking of a stationary or synchronous orbit anyway, which is a bit more specific than areocentric :P

Re:

[i kan reed]

Yeah, I know. I "translated" the use of aerocentric from Wikipedia to geocentric on the grounds of familiarity to most people. Sue me.

Re:I hadn't heard of Mangalyaan

[Muad'Dave]

You are not authorized to orbit my nipples.

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[i kan reed]

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure I am, but doesn't modern abiogenesis theory cite methane as one of the precursors to live, not just a product of it?

Like wasn't it one of the ingredients in the Miller-Urey experiment(along with ammonia, hydrogen, and water)?

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[cjameshuff]

It's a precursor, but not one that's stable in an atmosphere exposed to sunlight in the long term. Early Earth may have had some delivered by icy impactors. Titan has a significant quantity in the atmosphere, but even out in Saturn orbit there's enough sunlight that it's constantly being broken up and recombining into heavier hydrocarbons and other photochemical smog components. Titan is largely composed of ices and cryovolcanism is a likely source of replacement methane. There's no obvious sign of similar

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[i kan reed]

You say that as if excrement and public health aren't some of the primary targets of the Indian government to address right now. They can expend a little bit of money to be scientifically competitive in the future, while also addressing some of the more mundane problems their nation faces at the same time.

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[higuita]

India is both a rich and poor country... is acts like a rich country when doing big projects and acts like a poor country when requesting money and support. The true is that they have very rich people and very poor people... and the power usually don't care much about the poor (other than it is cheap labor)

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[kaiser423]

Yes, it's very interesting. The insertion burn is also going to be very interesting. For those that don't know, the Indian Space Agency has been building a bigger rocket for a while, but its been beset with delays. This orbiter was originally supposed to go on their bigger rocket, but it's not very reliable right now.

So, they put it on one of their smaller rockets. The net of this is that the orbiter itself had to use up most of its fuel just escaping Earth's orbit, leaving very, very little for the

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[kaiser423]

I forgot to mention comet Siding Spring is making a close approach by MArs, which is expeted to up to *double* the amount of hydrogen in Mar's upper atmosphere and increase drag from 1.4x to 40x normal drag. If it ends up bad, it could drastically shorten Mangalyaan's life and fairly considerably shorten the life of all other orbiters around Mars. That should happen around October 19th. But we might get to see some good pictures of the comet from Mars as well as (although rated as a minimal increase, wit

A test fire?

[plover]

If they ran their test and discovered it didn't fire, what would they realistically be able to do? I mean either it fires on Wednesday and they insert it into their desired orbit, or it misfires and heads off into the Oort cloud. It's not like if it fails the test today they can send a repair crew up there to re-tighten the muffler bearings.

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[drainbramage]

If there is one thing India has a lot of experience in it is remote support.

Will Robinson. Seriously?

[kaizendojo]

I guess it's appropriate, but seriously funny.

Gradle

[Redmancometh]

This is why I use gradle for my dependency management.