India's first interplanetary probe, Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in its mission to enter the red planet-Mars, has sucessfully completed 100 days in space on Wednesday (12 February 2014).
Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was launched on 05 November 2013 at 02:30 p.m. by India's rocket PSLV-C25 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
"Subsequent to six orbit raising manoeuvres around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection (TMI) Manoeuvre on December 01, 2013 gave necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric Orbit," according to Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) press release. The spacecraft has to travel 680 million km, out of which 190 million km journey has already been completed.
The First Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was done on 11 December 2013. Another three TCM operations are intended to take place around April 2014, August 2014 and September 2014.
The health of the spacecraft is normal and is continuously monitored by the ground station of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore. The ground station has been continuously receiving data from the spacecraft for the 100 days.
The spacecraft's thrust system is configured for Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) and TCMs Operations. On 6 February 2014, the health parameters of all the five payloads on the spacecraft were found to be normal.
"Presently, the spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds. After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24, 2014" the press release added.
