India is preparing to send another spacecraft to Mars, nine years after it made history by successfully putting a rocket into orbit around the red planet in its first attempt, officials at the Indian Space Research Organization said.
Mars Orbiter Mission-2, informally known as Mangalyaan-2, will carry four payloads, according to documents obtained by HT. Scientific instruments will study aspects of Mars, including interplanetary dust, the atmosphere and the Martian environment.
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“All of these payloads are in different stages of development,” said an official who requested anonymity.
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Nine years ago, on September 24, India made history by entering Mars’ orbit in its maiden attempt, a feat no other space agency had achieved until then.
The second mission will carry the Mars Orbiting Dust Experiment (MODEX), Radio Occultation Experiment (RO), Active Ion Spectrometer (EIS), and Langmuir Probe and Electric Field Experiment (LPEX), according to the mission document.
MODEX will help understand the origin, abundance, distribution and flow at high altitudes on Mars, the mission document said. “There are no measurements of interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) on Mars. The instrument can detect particles from a few hundred nanometers to a few micrometers in size, traveling extremely fast (>1 km/s). The results could help explain dust flow on Mars And whether there is any ring (as is supposed) around Mars, as well as confirming whether the dust is interplanetary or coming from Phobos or Deimos (both moons of Mars). She said that studying the dust could help explain the results of the reverse osmosis experiment.
An RO experiment is being developed to measure neutral profiles and electron densities. The instrument is an X-band frequency microwave transmitter that could help understand the behavior of the Martian atmosphere.
The space agency is also developing an EIS to characterize solar energy particles and ultrathermal solar wind particles in the Martian environment. This will help scientists understand the factors behind the loss of Mars’ atmosphere. The device will measure high-energy charge particles.
LPEX will enable measurement of electron number density, electron temperature and electric field waves, all of which will give a better picture of the plasma environment on Mars. “The LPEX experiment consists of a Langmuir probe (LP) and two electric field (EF) sensors mounted on a long arm,” the document states.
The first Mars orbital mission was India’s first interplanetary initiative. It was launched aboard the PSLV-C25 Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on November 5, 2013. With the success of this mission, it became the fourth space agency in the world to place a spacecraft in Mars orbit, and the first to do so. On her first attempt. Although the mission was designed to be six months long, it completed seven years in orbit in 2021 before retiring.
The mission’s first technology objectives were to demonstrate the design, implementation, and launch of a Mars orbital spacecraft capable of operating with sufficient autonomy during flight to the Red Planet, to insert the vehicle into Mars orbit, and to capture and complete the mission. Orbit stage around Mars.
The first Mars mission carried five scientific payloads to study the properties of the planet’s surface, morphology, minerals and atmosphere.
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