Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars | Hacker News Reader

Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars

isro.gov.in

324 pointsmiddleclick81 comments

Congratulations to ISRO. I was up all night following ISRO's updates :)

Mission homepage: http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx

Here are some pics from ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network) that was looking over the Trans Mars Injection, and the spacecraft itself: http://www.isro.org/mars/momimg.aspx

Here's a color picture of Earth captured by MOM last week: http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/mom-images.aspx

Launch photos of PSLV-XL: http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx

Differences between NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM trajectories: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1122094...

Here's a nice animation detailing the trajectories of MOM and MAVEN, in their heliocentric and geocentric phases: http://sankara.net/mom.html

Before jumping to heliocentric orbit, ISRO did a series of interesting orbit-raising maneuvers to build necessary escape velocity to escape from Earth's sphere of influence. Here are the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Orbit_rais... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Mission_pr...

Now, MOM has left geocentric orbit and is now in heliocentric (Sun-centric) orbit heading towards Mars. MOM has now entered inter-planetary space. When MOM comes close to Mars in Sep 2014, its rocket motor will be fired to move spacecraft into Mars orbit and get captured by Mars gravity. During this journey, ISRO has planned for four mid-course corrections if needed.

NASA Eyes on the Solar System is tracking ISRO MOM as well: http://eyes.nasa.gov/

NASA Eyes gets spacecraft trajectories from their DSNs.

Here's a screenshot showing NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM: http://i.imgur.com/7l56d7N.jpg

excellent reply swatkat. Thanks for the info

I saw a reference to the [interplanetary transport network](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Networ...) sometime back, and wanted to confirm if that is the only/best way to travel between planets and is that what the MOM is doing, i.e. it has entered into one of those paths where it does not need to spend any energy till it reaches nearby Mars.

No, the ITN isn't the only way to travel, and it's not what MOM is using. It's just doing a Hohmann transfer, which is just about the most basic orbital maneuver possible. The ITN is the clever, sneaky way to travel between planets with a shoestring fuel budget by bouncing around chaotically. It can be better, but it does tend to take a whole lot longer.

Note that even a standard Hohmann doesn't need to spend any fuel until arrival (aside from minor course corrections). But with the ITN, it's potentially cheaper to achieve certain chaotic trajectories than it is to change the orbit enough for a Hohmann.

Before someone makes the inevitable "Why are they spending money on this instead of fixing poverty?" argument:

The whole Mars mission costs about as much as making four Bollywood movies.

http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro-ma...

Both Bollywood and Mangalyan are a distraction from the core issues, poverty being one of them. Why do people react to criticism that is inevitable for such a mission?

In my opinion, space probe to Mars is a good idea for space engineers and for the idea of adventure, it should be nurtured. But the moment the Indian Government a$$holes (who have eaten up more than 10000X that amount which a Mangalyan costs) and their media toots start projecting this achievement of engineers as their own "moment of glory" and a proof towards India becoming a global superpower, everything falls flat on the face.

There should be no doubt that poverty IS the biggest challenge for us (I am an Indian) to work on, and there are people with achievements in rural tech to help people over with just that. No space wizardry, just basic engineering. Heroism, inspiration and aspiration should be centred and drawn around those people too, India needs it more.

And this is part of working on poverty, in India and everywhere else. Forget all the other reasons. People need inspiration, and this is one way to provide it. The payoff may not be immediate, but it will come.

They also need local jobs in high-tech industries, rather then a continuous brain-drain off to Western nations.

India's poverty also has very little to do with "lack of money" as does poverty everywhere - i.e. why does the US have poverty, despite it's incredible wealth?

Why did Kennedy call for the moon landing instead of fixing the civil rights problem? why did LBJ setup medicare/medicaid instead of fixing racism and other inequities? Why did Obama setup Obamacare without fixing poverty in America?

why oh why?

LBJ did more to address poverty than any president save Roosevelt. If you're going to ask that specific question, ask about the money wasted on the Vietnam war and mayne the space program -- medicare/medicaid and the "Great Society" programd directly tackled poverty, and LBJ passed the civil rights act which, oh by the way, was Kennedy's legacy. Fixing healthcare is one way of directly addressing poverty. You can argue the methods (I would prefer single payer) but the intent is at least pointing in the right direction.

I read those as rhetorical questions and think you two may actually be in agreement.

Exactly! Sorry I missed the sarcasm tag. :-)

Technology is much faster at getting people out of poverty than giving them free money or free food. Heck, as someone from outside, the only thing about Indian industries is that "Indians are good at tech". If I were you, I'd try to focus even more on that, not less.

I hear you, however it is worth remembering that space wizardry is just basic engineering done to the nth degree and it keeps engineers in the country who might otherwise have left. If you want your engineers to help find solutions to the problems of poverty in India, the first thing to do is to make sure they stick around and having a space industry helps with that.

What people like you don't understand is that this is one of the ways of combating poverty. You can't ask people to just eat, reproduce and die, living just above the poverty line. That is worse than poverty.

What jingoistic people like you don't understand is that the ability to tolerate criticism is equally important.

> You can't ask people to just eat, reproduce and die, living just above the poverty line. That is worse than poverty.

> What jingoistic people like you don't understand is that the ability to tolerate criticism is equally important.

Don't you realize the same thing can be said about you :)

I criticized your criticism and you went all "jingoistic nut" on me. Sigh.

The problem is for any good action X that any government does as long as it has any side effect other than getting people out of poverty, it would get criticized as unnecessary. That leaves out only giving money to people directly.

No, I just pointed out the jingoism evident from this line:

> You can't ask people to just eat, reproduce and die, living just above the poverty line. That is worse than poverty.

What do those line mean? Who asked people to just eat, reproduce and die? How is something worse or better than poverty I do not know.

> it would get criticized as unnecessary. That leaves out only giving money to people directly.

No where in the parent comment or on this complete conversation it has been said that expenditure on Mangalyaan is unnecessary or wasteful. In fact it is the opposite that I said on the parent comment. Where did you read this?

> What do those line mean? Who asked people to just eat, reproduce and die? How is something worse or better than poverty I do not know.

If you can't understand that, I don't know what to say. Ask yourself this: why should poverty be reduced? The same rationale can be applied to why we need "space wizardry."

> No where in the parent comment or on this complete conversation it has been said that expenditure on Mangalyaan is unnecessary or wasteful.

How about this:

> No space wizardry, just basic engineering.

There are two India's now. The 100 million upwardly mobile middle and richer class living in walled inner cities and the 900 million+ poor and desperate people who need all kinds of poverty alleviation that the government can provide. The 100 million class wants better infrastructure, more tech jobs, open and corruption free democracy, space programs and more and they'll(we'll) get some of it. The rest cannot be helped easily. Even pouring money in rural tech cannot help most. Bulk of the poor now live in urban slums/poor suburbs around big cities. Money that goes to space programs would be a pittance for alleviating the poor masses. For the most part, the poor uneducated people cannot be helped from their own voting decisions that bring corrupt and inefficient politicians and crowd pleasing policies.

Absolutely! Is there a research or report on what percentage of poor have quit villages and moved to sub-urban areas lately?

Last when I was working near a village in central India near Uttar Pradesh/Madhya Pradesh border the estimate was a little under 4% (which is huge given the absolute numbers). I kind of believe that over 90% bulk might still be within the rural consideration, but I could be wrong. The electorate interest and its outcome seems to indicate that bulk of rural India is still where it was.

About 15 years ago, rural migration from the state of Orissa and Uttar Pradesh was pegged at less than 1%. So it is not out of context to consider here that the average speed of travel within the country and connectivity by rail and road has improved by factor of 4 in the last 15 years.

This is the rural progress and implementation of ordinary technology, that we easily miss out on, that has brought about rural migration that we're talking about here. It has sparked ambition in the poor which now aspires for a better life in the suburban cachement of Indian cities.

Leads to concluding that it is the gap between the rich and poor that leads to criticism and praise of space programs like Mangalyan. The '100 million India' who have the gift of being in the elite 100 million should take a note of this gap. And not be perturbed by criticism of technical feats like the Mangalyan.

The benefit of ISRO space program (though it has strategic pitfalls too) would surely reach the balance 900 million poor eventually, but that is in future. Immediate priority should be (and thankfully is) rural tech because that keeps the gap between rich and poor in control, and prevents volatility and conflict by keeping the sense of belongingness among the desperate poor.

That's what I think, but I may be removed from reality given that I am off coast now.

Worth mentioning: if you would have lived in India, hearing the same story about USA NASA Mars rover landing, you would have said: "Why are they spending time on this instead of fixing 14 trillion dollar debt?"

Just a matter of point of view.

Why would they care about US government debt? Nothing about government debt is detrimental to the human condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%932002_Argentine_gre...

Even better, read entire wiki article. Can you make same statement again?

This is talking about the Argentinian government defaulting on their debt. That has literally nothing to do with US government accruing more debt.

So yes, I have no problem making that statement.

For those pedantic fools focusing on the "debt" part of your comment, replace that with poverty, NSA spying, unemployment, education, or any other perceived problem. The specific problem isn't the point.

...or health-care, gun violence, crime, housing (lack thereof) etc etc.

Its a question of competing with the other regional power - China; The two aren't exactly friends; At least that's what the papers say: http://www.economist.com/node/16846256

There is always this tendency to confuse inequity with poverty. India's problem is inequity not poverty, just as it is in America. There is also the reason why Western Europeans and Americans whose combined population does not equal that of India should be judgmental about their choices.

Why should it be okay to for white people to tell brown people what they should or shouldn't do with their resources, not to mention that their advancement is supported by the large numbers of brown and yellow skinned people who constitute a large proportion of their PhDs?

No, India's problem is real, actual, no-clean-water, no-antibiotics, no-electricity poverty, in most of the rural areas.

Poverty or no poverty, blue sky research is also necessary for an ancient civilization with over 1 billion people. They can't expect to depend on the rest of the world for all their technological needs.

Again the material resources for poverty reduction exists and I don't think those resources required for space exploration don't diminish them.

Financial or monetary allocation isn't quite the same as material resource allocation. In most of the world material resources are deployed by financial resources and the allocation of these is wholly arbitrary. Such as in America where trillions have allocated for the payment of odious and criminal bank debts and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, when health and housing provision is woefully inadequate.

Do homeless people in America have good access to clean water, electricity and antibiotics?

How is that different from India?

People enjoy movies, which alleviates suffering, which ameliorates poverty. If poor folks get to watch movies, that is. Movies have very low marginal cost, making them among the most cost effective forms of entertainment.

Missions like this make poor people rich (eventually). Movies make rich people more rich.

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Benefits-Stemm...

Clever! You started this tangential discussion with the posturing that you are pre-empting it. Now this thread hijacks the actual topic at hand.

Did I do the conversion right? Total cost was only ~72 million USD??

Images of the spacecraft and facilities here: http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/satellite.aspx.

So does this mean we just sit back & watch for 10 months? Or can something go wrong after this as well?

A lot can go wrong in the meantime: electrical or communication systems could fail, orbital insertion burns could fail (either due to messed up timing, communication, propulsion, or any number of other things), etc etc.

But that said, barring any huge design flaws, if you make it out of atmo you're probably going to be just fine. (Usually. Probably.) So it's mainly just a waiting game now.

Main risk factor of this whole program was the injection into earth orbit with correct orientation. The journey to Mars should be relatively risk-free. There still will be minor corrections en-route to Mars by firing engines. Mainly, now we sit back and wait for it to be captured by Mars gravity, the next major step where failure can occur.

> the injection into earth orbit with correct orientation.

Can that be called a new achievement for the launch vehicle? Is it more difficult than a high orbit satellite?

I guess it's similar to launching and placing satellites in right orbit, or parking orbit?

ISRO's launch vehicle PSLV-XL placed MOM in a parking orbit on Nov 5, 2013 and then ISRO did a series of orbit-raising maneuvers to bring MOM closer to Trans Mars Injection point. This post at The Planetary Society gives an idea about the orbits traversed by MOM:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/congrat...

Here's a summary of Mars missions and their success/failure: http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/

Lots can go wrong on the Mars side. E.g. Mars Polar Lander - smashed into Mars. Beagle 2 - last heard from just before landing. Mars Climate Orbiter - failed to land because of confusion between pounds and Newtons. Deep Space 2 - no communication after landing. Mars Observer - communication lost 3 days from Mars, probably due to fuel leak.

See "Mars Curse": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Probing_dif....

From that NASA website on mission logs - anybody else noticed that the success rates have dramatically increased after 2000?

I am wondering if this has got anything to do with significantly enhanced computing power we have nowadays.

I prefer to think that this has to do with the fact that NASA got rid of Dan Goldin and his "faster, better, cheaper" approach to project management.

In space you can't afford to cut corners. You need three people to tighten a screw: one to set the torque wrench, one to tighten the screw, and one to write the protocol, saying that the screw has been tightened. NASA found out in the 1950s, they forgot and learned it again, and Elon Musk will take note eventually.

Interesting perspective. Is there any analysis written about Goldin's era? I studied AI and robotics in late 90s / early 00s and Rodney Brooks' Behavior-based robotics and NASA's approach were in vogue and were given as examples how to do things (and I believed them too). There is some parallels to MVP thinking in tech community.

What I find interesting is that compared to Brooks it was actually Sebastian Thrun that managed to lead teams to build something remarkable (self-driving cars). IMO, his approach was never based on any single philosophical idea or AI technique, but instead his teams build robotic systems that combined many approaches, and the target was always to build something that worked in a real-world situations, like his museum robot.

Venus seems to be much more cursed than Mars - at least when it comes to Soviet probes trying to take photos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera#Venera_9_to_12

Venus isn't the nicest play in the galaxy with surface pressure 92x earth and a temperature of 462 C and all.

Mars is a walk in the park as far as the environmental situation goes. Venus is absolute hell so failure is unsurprising.

This is awesome news. It's great to now have so many countries doing space exploration. Can't wait to see what they find.

Nice that they are spending Indian taxpayer money on science! (I am biased towards robotic missions vs. getting ppl into orbit at all costs)

I pay tax in India but I am happy for this mission but it causes more pain when my money goes into the pockets of corrupt politicians. It's not the country which is poor, it's the corrupt politicians and bureaucracy. Refer to list of Indian scams : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India , now annual scam every year is worth $20 billion , I wonder why people are not criticizing the administration and corruption but ISRO.

The problem is not so much that countries like India do not have honest, competent politicians, but rather how to tell them apart.

Fighting corruption needs transparency and a system that prevents corruption rather than punishing it.

I was reading an article somewhere when i came across this stat: that americans have spent 10 times as much as indians have put in this mars probe, i mean how is this possible 10x ratio doesn't seem to be justifying either india is real cheap when it comes to scientific instruments or americans are overspending... and former case doesn't look like a possibility considering that mostly the government companies are manufacturing the spare parts for such missions btw i would like to congratulate the Indians if that stat holds any truth.

Worth looking at: http://www.quora.com/Robert-Frost-Quora-user/What-are-Robert...

Read the answer and the comments on it. What do experts have to say about this?

Well, Robert Frost /is/ an expert. He works at NASA. But I guess he was in a bit of a bad mood. That whole month, he kept getting A2A's about MOM.

That's so awesome! They need a better web designer for their site though. That brown background is just horrible.

I'm Indian, and would like to start a gallery of "ghastly Indian government websites". If you want to gaze in horrified fascination at the train wreck of execrable blink tags, long scrolling marquees, and millions of unintelligible categories, go look at:

Delhi Govt.: http://delhi.gov.in/

BSNL (a leading public sector telco): http://www.bsnl.co.in/

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre: http://barcrecruit.gov.in/

Nehru Science Centre: http://www.nehrusciencecentre.gov.in/

Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research: http://www.igcar.ernet.in/

This being said, I feel pretty good about the fact that ISRO and others' ramshackle websites don't seem to be too indicative of their technical prowess, though they are undoubtedly embarrassing.

[Possibly jingoistic downvoters -- do you actually think these websites are decent, or even half-decent? Be honest.]

Government website in India are terrible. Most are built by NIC (National Informatics Center). That works just like an employment scheme with lots of entry-level employees.

That's unlikely to happen soon. Five years back, on behalf of my company, I went to make a technical presentation on how a CMS could benefit in maintaining the website for one of their centers. To my shock, they wanted the CMS to write to a Compact Disc and the CD would then be inserted on the server for copying the content. All of that to manage security risks.

That said, I am amazed they now maintain a neat Facebook Page and live stream launches

Hate it when capitalistic countries and their residents start pointing out to poverty in India when ever the see a smaller country out doing them in technology. investing in these technologies helps hundreds of engineers and also sows the seed of ambition in millions of others.

Boy its not a smaller country. It will explode some day with people.

Had no idea this was even underway.

Seriously you need to update your knowledge... not knowing about a mars exploration satellites?

Me neither. I vaguely defend myself by noting that HN seems to be fairly US-centric, and since I live in the US, I tend to hear more about things like SpaceX launches (watched the two aborted ones this week) than I do about the Indian, Chinese or Japanese space programs.

You're in luck - Chang'e 3 launches tomorrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3), and assuming it doesn't blow up en route to orbit you'll probably hear more about it (especially as it's forecast to be the first spacecraft in decades to make a soft landing upon the Moon).

Damn, is there video being streamed anywhere?

Edit: I guess it already took off by the time I saw this.

It was on HN front page when the orbiter was launched.

Here are some very informative articles about ISRO MOM, by Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/congrat...

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1122094...

Second link nicely explains the differences between NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM trajectories.

Chak De! India.

What does this actually mean for non-experts in Astronomy? Is it in a higher orbit around Earth, has it started a slingshot for Mars, or has it started orbiting Mars?

It has left the Earth's orbit and started heading towards Mars.

It means, MOM has left Earth's sphere of influence, and it's now orbiting in a heliocentric (Sun-centric) orbit. Later in Sep 2014, when MOM comes close to Mars, its rocket motors will be fired again in order to move towards Mars orbit and get captured by Mars gravity.

Is this a science project, or a status project? Science would be best, but even as a status project, better Mars Orbiter than more nuclear warheads.

It's a technology development and demonstration, and science project. This is the first inter-planetary mission for ISRO, and the next step after their 2009 Moon mission, Chandrayaan-1 :)

http://www.isro.org/mars/objectives.aspx

http://www.isro.org/mars/payload.aspx

This announcement makes me want to play more KSP ...

unrelated comment triggered by looking at the link, why are Indian websites at large so crappy and appear to be from 1990s? Just like with the insane lawless vehicle traffic, people have become used to crappy websites in India.

1. Ignorance of the administrators - the programmers in the institutes, if any, have to listen to the design ideas of the administrators even when the programmers are more competent and up-to-date. The administrators may be competent in their own areas, but they have to be listened to at all costs.

2. The programmers in these institutes are often sidelined, and their work is seen as inessential. So, many of them lack motivation to update their skills. Regular "refresher courses" to update skill-sets are hardly ever funded.

3. There are a lot of restrictions to government companies outsourcing work to private companies - in general it is very difficult for government companies' funds to flow to private companies - for example, all govt. employees have to fly Air India, even when other airline tickets are cheaper. In things like website development, this means that it is hard (not impossible) to subcontract the work to a non-government agency. Also, the private subcontractors who do get the projects leave after 3 years or so, since there is no maintenance contract built-in. The maintenance contractors who come in later have no idea what the existing code base is.

Overall, I think this is a system designed to minimize corruption. Please see a related analysis on the healthcare.gov debacle - "Furthermore, many of the procurement policies that make access to services like AWS difficult have been put in place to prevent corrupt or unjust spending of taxpayers’ money. Unfortunately many of these policies have become so complicated that the issues get obfuscated, they repel innovative and cost effective solutions, and ultimately fail to achieve their original intent. " [1]

The policy does a bad job at preventing corruption, anyway. But especially in the case of a fast-changing technology like web development, it is a ridiculous hurdle. (No, I am not a programmer, just an exasperated government employee in India, who is aghast that so much of talent in the country is not allowed to be used just because of ill-made legislation. I am not a fan of vigilante activism either - they have no idea of the kind of policy fetters that people have to deal with in government.)

[1] http://www.civicagency.org/2013/10/learning-from-the-healthc...

Many NASA or ESA websites do not look one bit better. I don’t think this is something inherently Indian.

SOHO: http://soho.esac.esa.int/home.html

Phoenix: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php

Kepler: http://kepler.nasa.gov

Those are all quite terrible websites.

A new cold war in space race has begun..

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