It will be 16 anxious seconds from 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) Station, Bangalore, when ground controllers will correct the trajectory of India’s Mars Orbiter, speeding towards the Red Planet.
During the complex manoeuvre, the ground controllers will radio commands to the orbiter’s thrusters to fire for 15 or 16 seconds to correct its trajectory so that the spacecraft reaches the Martian orbit on the appointed day of September 24.
M. Annadurai, Programme Director, Indian Remote-Sensing Satellites and Small Satellites Systems, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), called it “a trimming manoeuvre” of the spacecraft’s trajectory, when “a finer correction will be given to its velocity
