The Indian Mars dream was alive on Monday after the sleeping main LAM engine was prodded back to life and made to fire briefly.
A working LAM means ISRO's Plan A of using the engine on the Big Day on Wednesday is very much on, ISRO officials had recently explained.
The four-second firing also ensured that the course of the travelling spacecraft was slightly adjusted as planned, ISRO's social media update said after the action of 2.30 p.m.
“We had a perfect burn for four seconds as programmed. The trajectory has been corrected. MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) will now go ahead with the nominal plan for Mars Orbit Insertion (on Wednesday),” the update said.
Although September 24 is the Big Day for putting the spacecraft into an orbit around Mars, the billion-rupee question for ISRO was whether the LAM, resting for over 300 days, would act as needed on Monday.
And it did.
The LAM has been ‘sleeping’ for about ten months since its last big action of December 1: that of giving the spacecraft the escape velocity from Earth’s gravitational pull.
The latest action also puts India less than two days from historic success: no other space-faring country or agency that has made Mars missions has made it there in the first shot.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is due to arrive in Bangalore on Tuesday night for another engagement, will watch the final operation from the Mars operations control centre at ISTRAC control centre at Peenya.
With Monday’s four-second firing of the LAM engine, ISRO crossed its biggest challenge in the mission.
Only earlier in the day, the spacecraft entered the sphere of Martian influence on Monday and was cruising closer, barely 5.8 lakh km from the Red Planet.