India's Mars probe Options

[mcaplinger]

To be fair, the Moon's is a much more challenging thermal environment than Mars'. I think.

That's certainly true. We ended up using every trick in the book to get LROC to perform in a low lunar orbit.

[gndonald]

Emily has posted an update on this one, the instruments have been selected and they hope to have them ready for March. I'm going to wish the Indians as much luck as they need for this mission. I'll be happy to see them get the probe onto a Earth - Mars trajectory.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...ars-update.html

In regards the launch profile, I can remember reading somewhere that for countries like India & China that initial 22,000 km orbit is easier to reach because their launch vehicles are optimised for putting communications satellites into that orbit.

[Paolo]

there was a very short story in Science yesterday (for those having access it's here
just one sentence to retain:

the Indian Space Research Organisation notes that the tiny satellite is "more of a technological mission than a science mission."

there is also a detailed list of instruments on NASAspaceflight forum
note that the Indian methane detector is said to be

designed to measure methane in the Martian atmosphere with ppb accuracy

i think this is about the same capability as the spectrometer on Mars Express. TGO, IIRC should go for part-per-trillion accuracy

[machi]

Here is source with short article about electro-optical payload of the Indian Mars mission.
You can find that article quickly by using ctrl+f and simply find "MCC".

Mars Colour Camera is refractor design and it has resolution 25 m/pix (50 microrad) from distance 500 km
It has 2K×2K CCD with RGB Bayer filter for visible light between 0.4 to 0.7 microns.
Frame size is 50×50 km from perigee and 8,000×8,000 km from apogee.

Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) is Fabry-Perot interferometer with ppb detection limit for methane. It works in narrow SWIR window (1642-1658 nm).

Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Specrometer (TIS) is grating spectrometer with uncooled microbolometer array for TIR between 7 to 14 microns.

[tolis]

The high apocentre makes it - in principle - capable of flying by Deimos.
Neither MEX nor the other orbiters currently operating around Mars
can approach that moon.

[Cosmic Penguin]

A paper on the mission to be presented on the 44th LPSC: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/2760.pdf

Edit: Another poster about the spacecraft seen at the Aero India 2013 Expo:

[SFJCody]

I notice that this is scheduled to arrive at Mars a month before C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) which has a current nominal flyby distance of 100,000 km (likely to change significantly as the arc length increases). I wonder whether it would be possible to engineer some sort of flyby following orbit insertion? I imagine this is either impossible or would require the expenditure of much more propellant than ISRO would be prepared to sacrifice.

[Explorer1]

Way too many factors to consider right now. If anything, MAVEN be the most suited to getting a whiff of the tail, given its instruments being specialized for rarefied gases. Would instrument commissioning even been done for either spacecraft that soon after arrival?
And of course, it's really up to the comet to decide where to pass and how much volatiles to emit...

[Cosmic Penguin]

Updates from Emily: ISRO's Mars mission now undergoing assembly and testing; NASA, ISRO agree to future space science cooperation