India's Mars success

I haven't seen this mentioned here. An amazing success, especially considering the budget. A real good news story.

https://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/24/india-mars-successful-mangalyaan-idINKCN0HJ05720140924

Good job, India!

It's amazing they were able to do it for so little money.

I did see it on the Fox News ticker this morning. Pretty cool accomplishment. Not many countries in that club!


Launching rockets (or missiles in my case) is so easy a chimp could do it. Read a step, do a step, eat a banana.

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Any success in other countries helping the exploration of Mars is great.

I heard a story on NPR about this and they explained why it was so much cheaper. First, the Indian probe was placed in an oval orbit as opposed to a circular one that the U.S. typical uses. The oval orbit is achieved using considerably less fuel than a circular one; I think they said 50% less fuel. That means a big reduction in weight for the probe, which means a big reduction in the original weight for the rocket. However, this means the probe is only "near" Mars a fraction of the time during the one end of the oval and isn't as productive as a probe in a circular orbit.

Second, the labor is a lot cheaper in India. The aerospace engineers there are paid about $1,000 a month.

Third, the guy being interviewed by NPR said he suspected the reported cost was probably a little "fuzzy". He suspected some interesting accounting was used to achieve the $74 million number. He didn't think it was that far off, but he thought the cost was higher than reported.

All that said this was still a huge achievement for India. The expert also speculated that they would try to put someone in orbit at some point.

MAVEN is in a highly eccentric orbit so that it can dip down "into" the atmosphere.

These accounting games are very difficult to play. The missions are extremely different. You are comparing apples and oranges...


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The major cost of any space mission is labor. Labor rates in India are at least an order of magnitude lower than in North America or Europe so the lower cost is not surprising. The Indian University system is extremely competitive and produces excellent engineers so there is no lack of smart personnel available to design and complete the mission on time and within budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission

The LV used was first flown in 1993 and is reliable and inexpensive as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle

Bob

Either way, it's exciting that a country like India can have a successful martian mission.

Also the science goals are a bit less ambitious than Maven, think I saw that MOM's science payload is 30 lbs and Maven was 100+lbs so there is a big chunk of fuel as well. Cost aside, still they've joined a pretty exclusive club and on their first try. I hope all the systems check out well and they get good data.