Yash Goliya, TE EXTC
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has recently launched their first
interplanetary mission, Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or Mangalyaan. At a meagre
cost of $75 million, Mangalyaan will make India the fourth country to send a
spacecraft to Mars. So how is MOM so inexpensive? One of the few reasons is
mentioned below.
This spacecraft has to travel 680 million kilometres before it is capable of orbiting the
Red Planet. In order to keep the weight of the spacecraft within the limit, Mangalyaan
has to travel to Mars with a high mileage fuel (that’s something Indians are obsessed
about, “Yeh kitni deti hai ?”). The system used is a bipropellant consisting of
Monomethylhydrazine (MMH) and nitrogen tetraoxide. 852 kg of this fuel manages to
give Mangalyaan a mileage of about 798122 km/kg! The main reason behind such a
high mileage is the selection of Hofmann transfer orbit which reduces the fuel
consumption drastically.
Mangalyaan’s trajectory.
Credit: ISRO
Hopefully, this frugal ‘yaan’ (Sanskrit word for ‘spacecraft’) will catapult India’s
space programme to greater heights and will encourage thousands of Indians to take
up Science and Technology!