Isro, Nasa Mars missions set to see collaboration

Isro's MOM and Nasa's MAVEN spacecraft would join five other operational orbiters and surface rovers exploring the Red Planet

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro)’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) would see synergy with Nasa’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN).

While, Isro’s PSLV C-25, which would carry the Mars Orbiter spacecraft, is expected to lift off at 2.36 pm on November 5 from the organisation’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre launch pad at Sriharikota, Nasa is planning to launch its MAVEN spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center on November 18.

The MOM and MAVEN spacecraft would join five other operational orbiters and surface rovers exploring the Red Planet; these spacecrafts are expected to reach Mars in September 2014.

“If all goes well, Nasa’s MAVEN orbiter and India’s MOM will work together to help solve the mysteries of the Mars atmosphere. We plan to collaborate on some overlapping objectives,” Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator from the University of Colorado at Boulder told space and astronomy news site Universe Today. He added, “There are some overlapping objectives between MAVEN and MOM, and we have had some discussions with the MOM science team.”

Nasa/JPL (jet propulsion laboratory), through its deep space network facilities, is providing communications and navigation support to India’s Mars mission.

The primary objective of Isro’s MOM launch is to study whether Mars had an environment that could support life. It also seeks to explore that planet’s surface, topography, mineralogy and atmosphere. MOM also plans to search for methane on Mars. On Earth, the chemical is strongly tied to life. According to a Reuters report, methane, which can be produced by non-biological processes, was first detected in the Martian atmosphere a decade ago.

Nasa’s MAVEN mission is the first spacecraft devoted to investigating and understanding the upper atmosphere of Mars. MAVEN would also focus on the thin atmosphere in Mars. The mission is designed to help scientists figure how the planet managed to lose an atmosphere that was earlier believed to be thicker than Earth’s.

“MAVEN is going to focus on trying to understand what the history of the atmosphere has been, how the climate has changed through time and how that has influenced the evolution of the surface and the potential habitability, at least by microbes, of Mars,” Reuters quoted Jakosky as saying.