ISRO to bring together MOM team members

On November 5, two years since India launched its historically successful Mars Orbiter Mission, Indian Space Research Organisation is bringing about 100 key Mars team members together for a technical retrospective of the mission.

The Mars Orbiter took off from Sriharikota on that day in 2013 and reached the red planet without a hitch after a journey of 10 months and millions of kilometres.

National Geographic channel will also air a one-hour documentary on how the mission was made and the challenges of design and engineering that came up in its course. The channel has said it will telecast “India's mission to Mars” at 10 p.m. that day.

M. Annadurai, Director of ISRO Satellite Centre, which assembled the Orbiter in extra-quick time more than two years back, said the technical gathering will take stock of how the power, communication and thermal system of the Mars Orbiter have performed since it was sent off.

The spacecraft has survived the vagaries of the Martian environment, solar conjunctions or blackouts and come back into the picture. These episodes should give the teams some clues and lessons for future, according to Dr. Annadurai.

sAnother official said NatGeo shot the film about six months back. It includes videos and capsules taken during the different stages of assembling the spacecraft, interspersed with interactions with key members of the MOM team.

After its launch on November 5, 2013, the Orbiter circled Earth for about 25 days; On December 1, 2013, it was sent out of the Earth's gravitational influence and towards Mars. The spacecraft reached Mars on September 24, 2014. It has still been going around it and sending pictures although it was built for a life of six months around Mars.