Isro’s Mars Orbiter completes half its journey
The spacecraft has crossed 337.5 million km in its elliptical orbit around the sun
New Delhi: India’s Mars Orbiter completed half its journey to the red planet on Wednesday morning, the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) said.
As at 9:50 am, the Mars Orbiter spacecraft crossed 337.5 million km in its elliptical orbit around the sun. It has to complete 680 million km before an orbit-insertion manoeuvre is performed to inject it into the Martian orbit.
The straight distance between the spacecraft and Earth is 39 million km; a signal from Earth to the rocket and back takes 4 minutes and 15 seconds.
“As the spacecraft moves further away from the Earth, the signal it receives gets weaker. There are three antennae on the spacecraft and till now we were using the medium gain antenna, but now we need the high gain antenna to receive the weak and small signals," an Isro official said, requesting anonymity.
All the five scientific instruments aboard the orbiter are normal, the space agency said.
The spacecraft was launched aboard Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C25 on 5 November. If successful, India’s Mars mission will become the fourth such mission to complete its journey after those of the US, Russia and the European Space Agency.
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