Mars mission launch cleared for Tuesday

Technicians inspect the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, on Wednesday. India’s Mars orbiter mission is scheduled to be launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) on Nov. 5.

The country’s highly anticipated Mars Orbiter Mission will take off as planned on Tuesday, November 5, at 2.38 p.m.

An ISRO official said the Launch Authorisation Board on Friday cleared the flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

The 56-hour countdown begins on Sunday at 6.08 a.m.

The green signal comes a day after ISRO completed a dry run or rehearsal to test the launch readiness of its mission control staff and centres.

The 1,350-kg spacecraft carrying five experiments is slated to be flown on a PSLV vehicle from the Sriharikota launchpad. After a 53-minute cruise it will be ejected into space somewhere over the South Pacific, after which it will follow a special path or trajectory initially around Earth over the next 25 days.

To capture details of these critical moments, ISRO has put tracking terminals on two ships and deployed them to the South Pacific along with its engineers and navigation scientists.

On November 30, the spacecraft will be thrust out of the Earth’s pull and on to its path towards Mars.

That is a journey of 300 days. The orbiter is slated to reach the Martian sphere of influence on September 24, 2014, and then go around the Earth’s neighbour for at least six months.