Loading of commands for inserting India's Mars spacecraft into the Red Planet's orbit began on Sunday before noon and it will take about 13 hours to load these time-tagged commands into the spacecraft, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said.
“The exercise is progressing smoothly,” they added. These commands will be used on September 24 for firing the Mars spacecraft's propulsion system, called 440 Newton engine, for 24 minutes to lower the spacecraft into an orbit around the planet. It will be a tricky manoeuvre as the engine has to sizzle with life on September 24 after it has idled for more than 300 days during its voyage in space.
ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan earlier said that while “the primary objective” of India's Mars Orbiter Mission was to put the spacecraft into a Martian orbit, its scientific objective was empirical observation of the planet. The ISRO-built orbiter carries five instruments to detect methane on Mars, to study its geological activity, to study the Martian atmosphere and so on.
ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle put the spacecraft into an initial orbit on November 5, 2013.
