> The Rs 450-crore mission intends to explore the presence of Methane in the Red Planet with the help of five scientific instruments on board the spacecraft.
That is roughly $75 million.
That is roughly $75 million.
ISRO's Moon mission Chandrayaan-1[4] cost around $64 million back in 2008. It's relatively "costly" compared to Mars mission because ISRO had to do some groundwork to support such deep space missions. For example, Indian Deep Space Network[5] was built at that time to track Chandrayaan-1; and now it's being used to track MOM as well.
[1]http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news...
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-1K
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apogee_kick_motor
In early 1990, there was a weight problem with the spacecraft, and the engineers were looking for ways to eliminate mass. I was working with the propulsion team, and my task was to go through all of the blueprints, count components, and document their mass. The team was going to use that to determine which components were redundant (for safety) and how much mass could be eliminated by removing them.
I did my task, and went on to something else so I don't know how the system was modified. But from what I've read about the loss of the spacecraft, a leading theory is that one of the valves in the propulsion system failed and that led to the explosion. The valves were designed to be opened very soon after launch, once the satellite reached Earth orbit; they weren't designed for the deep-freeze of a two-year trip to Mars before being opened. I beleive that not only did the valve malfunction, but its redundant backup had also been removed based, in part, on the task I performed. If there hadn't been a weight problem (which may also have been to frugal engineering to reduce fuel requirements), the explosion might not have happened.
I've never felt any responsibilty; my task was to provide information, not decisions. But it would have been nice if I was involved with a more successful mission.
In fact, ISRO's Moon mission Chandrayaan-1 ended prematurely due to overheating of star sensor and power supply unit (inadequate thermal protection!). They underestimated the amount of radiation from the Sun and that reflected by the Moon, at an orbit of 100km from the Moon[1].
For MOM, ISRO has "hardened" their satellite bus with better thermal protection, larger solar panels, redundant subsystems, redundant fuel lines, FDIR system etc.[2] Hoping for the best :)
[1]http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/48921.aspx
[2]http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/pdf/pslv-c25-brochure.pdf ("Major Challenges" section)
The math is the same, but in the thermal model you're calculating an equilibrium state to figure out the final temperature of each surface, or cyclic variation in the case of a rotating spacecraft with the sun and other emitting bodies around it. That tells you if temperatures are within the tolerance range of the components over the mission lifetime. If not, you have to add thermal protection and rerun the simulation.
This probably all goes a lot faster today than it did on the 1990's era VAX minicomputer I was using. There's probably real-time visualization now, which I'll bet is pretty cool.
[edit] Also, building, launching, and operating spacecraft are a lot more like bridge building and other non-software engineering projects. Each spacecraft may be unique, but they're made up of well-understood parts that go together in well-understood ways using time-testing engineering practices that make simulations and modeling truly useful and big-design-up-front feasible. We don't have much of that in software engineering yet, so trial-and-error is still a necessary tactic.
http://www.quora.com/Robert-Frost-Quora-user/What-are-Robert...
The actual answer may have something to do with the fact that India did not spend a lot of money on R&D specifically for the Mars mission. They are leveraging existing technologies and knowledge from earlier missions (including some from NASA and ESA).
The fact is this concept called 'frugal engineering' or commonly called in Hindi as 'Jugaad'. Its a little unfair to call is 'frugal engineering', this is more on the lines of 'Do what it takes, with whatever little you have, to go where ever you want to go'.
Its really more like a cultural thing here. After centuries of invasions, foreign rule and desperation the idea is to see some success at any cost. You try to beat the odds any way you can.