Isro Mars Orbiter Mission (MoM) Successfully placed in Mars Transfer Trajectory

One of the major mile stones in the India's space history has been crossed.  The ISRO Mom (Mars orbiter mission) has completed its 23 minute long liquid engine firing for entering into Mars Transfer Trajectory.   This will impart an incremental velocity of 648 m/s while consuming 198 Kg of fuel.  This activity started on today, 1st December, 2013 at 00:49 hrs IST and completed after 23 minutes.

The critical manoeuvre to place the MoM was successfully carried out.  So the earth orbiting phase of the spacecraft has ended and the MoM is on its way towards the Red Planet (MARS) after a journey of about 10 months.  The trans-Mars injection is a crucial event which is intended to place the MoM into an orbit around the sun marking the first step towards the 300 day journey to reach the orbit of MARS after crossing nearly 680 Million Kilometers.


ISRO planned to make four corrections in the course of the spacecraft's journey to Mars before it is expected to reach Mars in September, 2014.  This is to correct any deviations along the path towards Mars.

The MARS Orbiter Mission is being continuously monitored by ISRO from their deep space network antennae at Bangalore.  We all know that PSLV-C25 has successfully placed  the 1350 Kg Mars Orbiter Mission into the orbit around earth on 5th November, 2013 at 14:38 hrs.

Curiosity Electrical issue solved

The  electrical issue of Curiosity has been resolved.  The root cause of change in voltage of the vehicle was found out.  NASA has resumed the science activities of Curiosity from yesterday.

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage on the vehicle. The voltage change itself did not affect the rover safety or health. The vehicle's electrical system has a "floating bus" design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle's chassis—its mechanical frame—and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-curiosity-electrical-issue.html#jCp

Mars Rover Curiosity Sidelined by Electrical Glitch

Electrical problem has cropped up over the last week end in the NASA's Curiosity rover.  The rover stopped gathering data for few days.  The Mission team noticed a change in the voltage difference between the body of the rover and its electricity distributing power bus  on 17th November, 2013.  The team suspect that the culprit may be a "soft short", which is a sort of electrical leak through partially conductive material.  Curiosity is standing down temporarily while engineers are trying to understand what is the cause of electrical glitch.

The mission team said that the vehicle is safe and stable and fully capable of operating at its present condition but they are taking precautions to investigate the problem.  The voltage difference between the power bus and the Curiosity chasis was about 11 volts when the rover touched down inside Mars's Gale crater in August, 2012.  Now the voltage difference dropped to about 4 volts.

The issue appears to be unrelated to the software glitch that caused Curiosity to reboot its computer and go into a protective "safe mode" earlier this month, said the Mission team.
Curiosity's primary task is to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Mission scientists have already achieved this goal, finding that an area near the rover's landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

The 1 ton rover is now on the task of long drive from Yellowknife Bay to towering Mount Sharp whose foot hills hold a record of Mars' changing environmental conditions over time. If everything goes well as per plan, Curiosity must reach Mountain's base by the middle of 2014.

NASA's Curiosity Rover's Self Portrait at 'John Klein' Drilling Site

The picture shown above is the self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity which was taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during th 177th Martian day or so, of Curiosity's work on Mars ( 3rd Feb., 2013).

The Rover was positioned on a flat outcrop called "John Klein" which was a place selected for the first rock-drilling activities by Curiosity. The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the picture. The MAHLI which took the images was mounted on a turret at the end of the arm. 

Curiosity comes out of Safe Mode

The NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity has come out of the safe mode successfully and is back to its normal surface operations.  The Curiosity had been in Safe Mode since 7th November, 2013 when an un expected software reboot occurred during a communications pass with the orbiter.   The Mission operations recommenced on 14th Nov., 2013.

Rajeev Joshi who is a Software and Systems Engineer for Curiiosity Mission at JPL said that they have returned to normal engineering operations.  The Curiosity team was able to determine the root cause of the software root cause after analyzing the data returned by the spacecraft.  An error in existing onboard software resulted in an error in a catalog file.  This has caused an un expected reset when the catalog was processed by a new version of flight software which was installed on 7th Nov., 2013.  The team was able to simulate the problem on the ground. 

NASA's Curiosity performs Software Reboot

The Mars rover Curiosity of NASA has experienced an unexpected software reboot ( also called as a warm reset) on 7th November, 2013 during a communications pass while it was sending scientific data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for downlinking later on to Earth.  The reboot occurred after about 4 hours when a new flight software had been temporarily loaded into the Rover's memory.   


The telemetry data later downlinked from the rover indicated that  warm reset was performed as expected in responce to an un anticipated event.  The warm reset is executed by flight software when it identifies any problem with one of its operations.  The reset restarts the flight software into its initial state.  A team from NASA is working out towards understanding the cause of the reset and to return the rover for normal operations.  This is the first time that the rover has executed a fault related warm rest during its 16 months of Mars surface operations.

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Approaches 'Cooperstown' in last week of October, 2013

The NASA's MARS Rover Curiosity has completed its first two-day autonomous drive on 28th Oct, 2013 which begins the movement of the rover to a good place for pictures useful for selecting the next target. 

The Rover chooses a safe route when it drives autonomously to the designated points using its on-board computer to analyze the stereo images which it takes during the pauses in the drive. The Mars Rover Curiosity has come to about 80 meters away from "Cooperstown".  This is a place which is suitable candidate for the examination with on-board instruments on the Rover's arm.   Curiosity has not used its arm-mounted instruments to examine a target since 22nd Sept., 2013 while departing from a place called "Darwin".  The researchers used the arm's camera and spectrometer for four days at Darwin on 22nd Sept., 2013.  

The low ridge that appears as a dark band below the horizon in the center in the above picture  is a Martian outcrop called "Cooperstown," a possible site for contact inspection with tools on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

The mission's main destination is the Mount Sharp.  Curiosity began its trek of 8.6 Kms starting from an area where it worked for first half of 2013, heading towards Mount Sharp.  The NASA research team used the images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to plot the route and choose a few points of special interest along the way which include Darwin and Cooperstown.


One of the key activities planned for the first week of November, 2013 is uploading a new version of onboard Software - the third such upgrade since landing of the rover.  The software updates allow continued advances in the capabilities of the rover.  The version prepared for upload in first week of November, 2013  includes, for example, improvements in what information the rover can store overnight to resume autonomous driving the next day. It also expands capabilities for using the robotic arm while parked on slopes. The team expects that to be crucial for investigations on Mount Sharp.

NASA Curiosity confirms MARS origin of some meteorites

NASA's Mars Curiosity  examined the Martian atmosphere recently in the month of October, 2013 and it confirms that some meteorites that have dropped to Earth are really from the Red planet.

The new measurement of the inert gas argon in Mars's atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity provides an evidence of the origin of Mars meteorites.  The new measurement is a high precision count of the two forms of argon - Argon 36   and Argon 38 which were measured by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on-board the rover.  These two isotopes of Argon exist naturally throughout the solar system.   The lighter form of Argon was taken away more readily because it rises to the top of atmosphere more easily and requires less energy to escape.  This has left Martian atmosphere enriched with heavier isotope of Argon (Argon 38).  The correct Argon ratio measured by SAM is 4.2.  One of the reason scientists are so interested in the argon ratio in the Martian meteorites is that it was - before Curiosity -- the best measure of how much atmosphere Mars has lost since the Red planet's wetter, warmer days billions of years ago.  Figuring out the Mars's atmospheric loss would enable us to better understand how Mars transformed from a once water-rich planet like Earth into today's drier, colder and less habitable world.

While argon makes up only a tiny fraction of the gas lost to space from Mars, it is special because it's a noble gas. That means the gas is inert, not reacting with other elements or compounds, and therefore a more straightforward tracer of the history of the Martian atmosphere. 

"Other isotopes measured by SAM on Curiosity also support the loss of atmosphere, but none so directly as argon," said Atreya. "Argon is the clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and does not interact or exchange with the Martian surface or the interior. This was a key measurement that we wanted to carry out on SAM."

The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape, but NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is designed to do so. As part of this mission,  NASA has launched the MAVEN on 18th November, 2013.  More details of NASA's MARS MAVEN Mission.

Some interesting facts about black holes

Black holes are one of the most fascinating objects in the universe.  The black holes have three "layers" - the outer and inner event horizon and the singularity.  The event horizon is the boundary around the mouth of the black hole where the light loses its ability to escape.  Once any particle crosses the event horizon, it can not escape.  The gravity is constant across event horizon.  The inner region of a black hole is the place where its mass lies and is known as Singularity.  This is a single place in space where the mass of the black hole is concentrated.  Here are some of the interesting facts about the black holes.

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• If you fall into a black hole, the strong gravity would stretch you like a spaghetti.  You will die before you reach singularity.
• Black holes do not such.  Suction is caused by pulling something into vacuum.  But objects simply fall into a black hole.
• The first object to be considered as a black hole is Cygnus X-1.  Rockets carrying Geiger counters discovered 8 new x-ray sources.  In the year 1971, scientists detected radio emissions coming from Cygnus X-1 and it was identified as a black hole
•  If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart
• Astronomers estimate that there may be 10 million to a billion stellar black holes with masses equal to 3 times of our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• The life cycle of most of the stars end up being a white dwarf or a neutron star.  but the black holes are the last evolutionary stage in the life time of a star
• There are 3 types of black holes - Stellar, Super massive and Intermediate black holes depending on their mass
•  As the black holes have strong gravity which pulls all of the light into its center, black holes can not be seen.
• The black holes too follow the laws of gravitation.  So in order to affect our Earth, the orbit of a  black hole has to be very near to solar system which is not likely,.
• Astronomers believe that our own Milky way galaxy has a super massive black hole at the center.
• One interesting fact is that black holes can not such all the matter in the universe.  Each black hole has its own event horizon similar to the gravitational field of a planet.  If the matter is not in the horizon, it will never get sucked into the black hole.
•  The giant black  hole at the center of Milky Way galaxy weighs about 4 million Suns.  But fortunately it is 30,000 light years away from us
• There is a belief that black hole eventually evaporate.  Black holes emit radiation.  The energy that produces radiation comes from the mass of the black hole. As the radiation is emitted, a black holes loses its mass.  So the black holes becomes smaller as it emits radiation. In effect, a black hole evaporates more quickly as it shrinks.

What are Black Holes?

The Black holes are one of the strange and most fascinating objects found in outer space.  The Black holes are cold remnants of dead stars with extreme density with such a strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape from the Black Hole if it comes near it.



The famous scientist Albert Einstein first predicted black holes in the year 1916 with his general theory of relativity.  The word "black hole" was coined in the year 1967 by American Astronomer John Wheeler.  The first black hole was discovered in the year 1971.

There is a mathematically defined surface called Event Horizon around black hole which marks the point of no return.  The hole is called "black" because it absorbs all the light which hits the horizon and reflects nothing.  

Most of the stars end up as white dwarfs or neutron stars.  The black holes are the last evolutionary stage in the lifetime of big stars which had been at least 10 or 15 times bigger than our Sun.  When these giant stars reach their final stages of their life, they often detonate into what is known as supernovae.  This kind of explosion scatters most of the star into the void of space but leaves behind a large "cold" remnant on which fusion no longer takes place.  In younger stars, nuclear fusion creates energy and a constant outward pressure exists in balance with the inward pull of gravity caused by star's own mass.  But in dead remnants of stars, no force opposes gravity - so the star begins to collapse in upon itself.


When there is no force to check gravity, the black hole shrinks to zero volume - at which point it is infinitely dense.  Even the light from such a star is unable to escape due to the immense gravitational pull.  The own light of the star gets trapped in it and the dark star becomes known as black hole.

The black holes are very small in size.  For example, a black hole with a mass equal to that of our Sun would have a 2-mile radius.  As they are very small and dark at a far off distance, we can not observe them directly.  But extremely large black holes do exist at the center of some of the galaxies.  These large black holes have mass of 10 to 100 billion Suns. 

 

Types of Black holes

 

 You can find three types of black holes.  1. Stellar black holes,    2. Super massive black holes,   3.  Intermediate black holes.
 

 The Stellar black holes are small but deadly.  When a star burns through the last of its fuel, it may find itself collapsing. For smaller stars, up to about three times the sun's mass, the new core will be a neutron star or a white dwarf. But when a larger star collapses, it continues to fall in on itself to create a stellar black hole.  Black holes formed by the collapse of individual stars are (relatively) small, but incredibly dense. Such an object packs three times or more the mass of the sun into a city-size range. This leads to a crazy amount of gravitational force pulling on objects around it. Black holes consume the dust and gas from the galaxy around them, growing in size.

Small black holes populate the universe but their cousins, Super massive black holes dominate.  The super massive black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as our Sun but have a radius similar to that of Earth's closest star.  These kind of black holes are thought of lying in the center of every galaxy including our Milky Way galaxy.  Scientists are not sure how much large such black holes are.  Once they are formed, they easily gather the mass from the dust and gas around them, the material which is plentiful at the center of galaxies allowing them to grow to large sizes.  The super massive black holes may be a result of merging together of hundreds of tiny black holes.  Large gas clouds may also be responsible collapsing together and rapidly  gathering mass.  A third option may be the collapse of a group of stars all falling together.


The intermediate black holes were recently found by scientists.  Earlier they felt that black holes existed in small and large sizes.  This kind of intermediate black holes can be formed when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction.  Several of these intermediate black holes forming in same region could fall together in the center of a galaxy to create a super massive black hole.

Here is a video showing how a black hole is formed...
 

NASA's MAVEN Mission set of for Mars

The US Space Agency, NASA has launched its newest Mars Probe towards the Red plant on Monday, 18th November, 2013.   The mission objective of MAVEN is to determine how the Martian atmosphere transformed the world into the desolate wasteland it is today.

A perfect launch on an Atlas V rocket has sent the MAVEN spacecraft on her way to Mars.  The robotic spacecraft called as "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Probe (MAVEN) was launched atop Atlas 5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 01:28 PM EST (!8:28 GMT) beginning its 10 month journey to the Mars.

The spacecraft coasted for about half an hour following the two stage burn of Atlas and Centaur.  The Centaur was fired again to place MAVEN on a direct-to-Mars trajectory.  The MAVEN after separating from Centaur quickly established contact with Earth through the low gain antenna.  The solar panels were deployed few minutes later and started charging the batteries.

The signals of MAVEN were picked up by two 34-meter Deep Space Network antennae in Australia shortly after the launch.  The MAVEN spacecraft is going to study Mars's high atmosphere and try to understand the processes which robbed the world of most of its air.  Evidence shows that the Red planet once had a thick blanket of gases which supported presence of liquid water at its surface.  Today the air pressure is very low that free water would instantly boil away.  

The MAVEN spacecraft was released from Atlas 53 minutes after leaving the Cape Canaveral launch pad.   The MAVEN will perform four trajectory corrections during the course of long cruise with the first scheduled on 3rd December, 2013.  These manouvres ensure that the orbiter will arrive at right place and time to go into the orbit around Mars on 22nd sept, 2014.

 Maven also carries equipment to relay data to Earth from Curiosity and other Mars rovers  

Here is a Video showing the lift off  of MAVEN on 18th November, 2013.

First image from Indian Mars Orbiter Spacecraft

The Indian Mars orbiter is still in Earth's orbit.  The spacecraft is being prepared to depart to Mars on 1st December, 2013.   The on board camera was switched on recently and the first image of Earth was taken by Mars Orbiter Spacecraft.   You can see below the image of India - the birth place of the Mars Orbiter.

Animation of Mars Orbiter Mission

Here is a simple animation of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft on how it will be put into Mars orbit.  Here is the link to the animation.  :  http://sankara.net/mom.html

Fifth orbit raising activity of Indian Mars Orbiter Spacecraft completed on 16th Nov, 2013

The fifth orbit raising manuovre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft started at 01;27 hrs on 16th November, 2013.  The on-board liquid apogee motor was burned for 243.5 seconds and now the spacecraft apogee was changed from 118642 Kms to 192874 Kms.

The third orbit raising activity was completed on 9th November, 2013. ( 02:10L 43 Hrs IST  for 707 seconds).  The change in Apogee during this activity was from 40186 Kms to 71636 Kms.


The fourth  orbit raising activity was completed on 11th November, 2013. The apogee of Mars orbiter Spacecraft was raised from 71,636 Kms to 78,276 Kms by giving an incremental velocity of 35 meters / seconds ( as against 130 m/s originally planned to raise apogee to about 1,00,000 Kms). 

Second orbit raising manoeuvre completed on 8th Nov., 2013

Another milestone in ISRO MoM has been completed on 8th November, 2013.  The second orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft started at 02:18:51 hrs IST on 8th November, 2013 with a burn time of 570.6 seconds of Liquid apogee motor has been completed successfully.    With this activity, the on-board motor of Mars Orbiter was fired for 570.6 seconds taking up the Mars Orbiter to 40,186 km apogee (farthest point to the Earth) from the earlier levels of 28,814 km.

 The first orbit raising activity was completed on 7th November, 2013.  The Mars Orbiter was launched on 5th November, 2013 by ISRO from Sriharikota.   The spacecraft was placed in an elliptical orbit with a perigee of 248.4 Km and an apogee of 23,550 Km with an inclination of 19.27 degrees to the equator.

 The 1,340 Kg Mars Orbiter spacecraft carries 852 Kg of fuel on board.  It is expected that around 360 Kg of fuel is likely to be expended on the six orbit raising activities.  During the final orbit raising activity, the satellite will be put on Mars Transfer Trajectory on 1st December, 2013.  It is expected that the satellite will travel to the viscinity of Mars in Sptember, 2014 after 300 days of deep space journey.

The motors of the spacecraft will be fired once again when the spacecraft is near Mars in the reverse direction to slow it down and allow it to be captured by Martian gravity into an orbit around the red planet.

First orbit raising manoeuvre completed on 7th Nov., 2013

The first orbit-raising manoeuvre of India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was performed at 01:17 hrs Indian Standard Time (IST) early on 7th November, 2013).  The 440 Newton Liquid Engine of the spacecraft was fired for 416 seconds by commanding it from Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at Bangalore. With this engine firing, the spacecraft's apogee (farthest point to Earth) has been raised to 28,825 km, while its perigee (nearest point to Earth) is at 252 km. It may be recalled that Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, India's first interplanetary spacecraft, was launched into an elliptical earth orbit with a perigee of 248.4 km and an apogee of 23,550 km, inclined at an angle of 19.27 deg to the equator by India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in its twenty fifth flight (PSLV-C25). The achieved orbit was very close to the intended one.  All systems onboard the spacecraft are functioning normally. Further orbit raising maneuvers using the 440 Newton Liquid Engine are planned in the coming few days following which the spacecraft will be put on Mars Transfer Trajectory on December 01, 2013. This enables Mars orbiter spacecraft to travel to the vicinity of Mars in September 2014 after a 300 day journey in deep space. At that time, the 440 Newton Liquid Engine is fired again to slow down the spacecraft to enable it to be captured by Martian gravity into an orbit around it.

Facts about NASA's Mars Curiosity

The Mars Science Laboratory and its rover counter piece, Curiosity is one of the most ambitious Mars Mission flown by NASA.   One of the prime objective of the Curiosity is to find out if the red planet is or was suitable for life.  One more objective of the Curiosity is study about Mars's environment.

The size of Curiosity allows it to carry out lot of scientific experiments which will be able to analyze, take pictures or any rock within the reach of its 7 foot long arm.  Curiosity is 9 feet 10 inches long and 9 feet 1 inch wide and it is about 7 feet high.  The weight of Curiosity is 900 Kg.  The wheels of Curiosity have a 20 inch diameter.

The Curiosity is a six-wheeled robot of the size of a car.   The main mission objective of this Curiosity is to find out if Mars has supported small life forms...  and also if humans can survive on the red planet some day in future!!   The Curiosity has most of the senses of the humans..  The parts of Curiosity are very much similar to what a human would need to explore the red planet ( the brain, eyes, body, arm, legs etc...).  Here are some more details of Mars Curiosity.

• Name of the Mission : Mars Science Laboratory
• Rover Name : Curiosity Rover
• Size : 10 feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall
•  Reach of the arm : 7 feet
• Features : Geology lab, Rocker-bogie suspension, laser to vaporize rocks and a number of cameras
• Objective : To search places on Mars for past or present conditions favorable for life
• Date of launch : 26th November, 2011 7:02 AM PST
• Landing date : 5th August, 2012   10:32 PDT
• Length of Mission on Mars : One Mars year or about 23 Earth Months

The complete details of the Mission can be downloaded from Mars Science Laboratory Facts.

Read more about Curiosity below.

1. Curiosity landed one minute ahead of its scheduled after 36 weeks in space.   NASA put the official landing time on Mars' surface as 1:32 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Aug. 6, one minute later than the time the space agency estimated months ago. 

2. The Curiosity landed on the target, which is at the foot of a mountain which is 3 miles tall and 96 miles wide in the Gale crater.  


3. A relay system was employed by NASA to receive confirmation of the landing. The direct line of communications was obstructed by the Earth's horizon as the landing craft approached Mars' surface. So, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which had been repositioned a few weeks ago to better monitor the landing, relayed confirmation to the space agency's Deep Space Network antenna station in Canberra, Australia, which in turn relayed the news to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. 

4.  Just few minutes after its landing, th Curiosity has sent its first view of Mars,   a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover.  Later on it starting transmitting high resolution color images after deploying its mast.   The rover has 17 cameras in all.

5.  The Curiosity rover changed its speed when it entered the final stage of its journey.  The space craft approached Mars at a speed of 8000 miles per hour and then when it hit the top of Mar's atmosphere, the planet's gravity pulled it at a speed of 13,200 miles per hour.  The rover slowed down to 1.7 miles per hour as it touched down the surface by using its "Sky crane" landing technique.

6.  The weather was excellent at the time of descent even though there was a threat of a dust storm.

7. The Curiosity was lowered in a delicate sequence of events by thruster rockets, a 51 foot wide parachute and nylon cords.

8. The Curiosity carries 10 scientific instruments some of them were being used on Mars mission for the first time.  One such instrument was laser firing instrument which can check the elemental composition of the rocks from a distance. It will use a drill and scoop at the end of a robotic arm to gather soil and rock interiors, then move the samples to its lab instruments. 

9. The total cost of Curiosity mission is around $2.5 billions as per NASA which include the spacecraft development, science investigations and the cost of launch and the operations.

India's first Mars Orbiter Mission takes off Succesfully

The PSLV-C25 Rocket carrying Mars Orbiter Spacecraft blasted off from first launch pad in Sriharikota on Tuesday afternoon at 14:38 hrs IST ( 5th November, 2013).  After 45 minutes of flight, the first phase of India's first Mars Mission was announced as successful.

Chairman of ISRO said that the first phase of Mars orbiter Mission is succesful soon after the rocket injected the spacecraft into an Earth Orbit after 45 minutes of flight. 

The nail-biting --  phase came soon after the third stage of the rocket burned out, and the blip on the tracking screens disappeared.  Chairman explained earlier to the media that the rocket would be on a coasting phase for almost 28 minutes, 10 minutes of which will be a "total blind phase." The mission control witnessed some silent moments during this period. And, when mission director P Kunhikrishnan reported that the first of the two ships in the South Pacific Ocean had picked up signal from the rocket, the scientists lit up.

About 35 minutes into the flight, the rocket was cruising at an altitude "slightly higher than the expected trajectory,".  Soon, the orbiter was injected into an elliptical Earth orbit in what Kunhikrishnan called a "precision exercise." What follows in the next 10 days would be six crucial "orbit raising operations," in the wee hours of November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16.   The Mars Orbiter would leave the earth's orbit for a 300 day journey to Mars on 1st December, 2013 at 12:42 AM.  The Mars Orbiter is expected to be in Mar's orbit on 24th September, 2014. 

The 1,350-kilogram (3,000-pound) orbiter Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Hindi, must travel 780 million kilometers (485 million miles) over 300 days to reach an orbit around the red planet next September.  "The biggest challenge will be precisely navigating the spacecraft to Mars," said K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organization. "We will know if we pass our examination on Sept. 24, 2014."

Here is a video showing the live telecast of the PSLV_C25 launch.

Astronomers discover new planets, 3 of which are habitable

Astronomers  have discovered a new solar system which contains planets.  Three of those planets are suitable for living.   These three planets are habitable - means in the zone around the star where liquid water could exist which makes them possible candidates for presence of life.

The star named Gliese 667C is orbited by 7 planets and is a part of a triple star system known as Gliese 667.   "We identified three strong signals in the star before, but it was possible that smaller planets were hidden in the data," said Guillem Anglada-Escudé of the University of Göttingen in Germany, who led the study. "We reexamined the existing data, added some new observations, and applied two different data analysis methods especially designed to deal with multi-planet signal detection."

"Both methods yielded the same answer: There are five very secure signals and up to seven low-mass planets in short-period orbits around the star."    The Gliese 667C solar system is strikingly similar to ours and the three planets identified as habitable are confirmed to be super-Earths: planets that have more mass than Earth but less mass than larger planets like Uranus and Neptune.

The star is 22 light-years away from earth and is located in the constellation of Scorpius which is very close to our solar system, astronomers said -- within the Sun’s neighborhood, so to speak -- and much closer than the star systems investigated using telescopes such as the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.


"This is the first time that three such planets have been spotted orbiting in this zone in the same system," astronomer Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institute for Science who participated in the study said.  

Similar systems have been found before and are very common in the Milky Way, however, most of these systems are built around Sun-like stars and are too hot to be habitable.
The Gliese 667C system is the first example of a system that contains multiple habitable planets surrounding a low-mass star.

The discovery of more systems like Gliese 667C could mean that the amount of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy are more numerous than believed.

What is Space Research?

Space Research is nothing but the scientific studies carried out by using scientific equipments in the outer space.  The space research includes use of space technology for various research areas like earth science, material science, biology, medicine and physics.  Space exploration involves the study of outer space which is a part of space research.