Mangalyaan to watch comet from close quarters

Both spacecraft will simultaneously be studying the properties of the comet, and it is a big opportunity for space scientists of both India and US

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Comet Siding Spring will have a rendezvous with Mars on October 19, and Isro’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), along with NASA’s MAVEN, is there to have a close look at the comet. Siding Spring is named after the Australian Siding Spring Observatory, which discovered the comet on January 3, 2013.

The comet, flying in from the Oort cloud, outside the solar system, is one which will pass through; it is not in a regular orbit around the Sun. Such comets are thought to have seeded the solar system with material not commonly found in the solar system, and to have one pass in view offers a unique opportunity for scientists.

It will fly much closer to Mars than any other comet has done in human history, thus showering debris from its tail in the planet’s upper atmosphere, and probably creating a spectacle in the Martian atmosphere as the debris burn.

The comet is known to have a lot of methane and water. “We have been there just in time to watch and study a comet up close,” U R Rao, former Isro chairman, told Business Standard. “Both the spacecraft will study the properties of the comet. It is a big opportunity for space scientists of India and US,” he added.

The insertion of the spacecraft into the Mars orbit is only part of the job. Now the experiments start. Indian scientists will have to collate the large amount of data emanating from the mission and calibrate them, and then find new data.

ISRO’s experiments for Chandrayaan II are now getting ready. The Rover and Lander have to be readied. “We need to learn how to land on the Moon’s surface,” Rao said, adding no one will share the technology for the same with India, and so we have to develop them on our own.

There’s a programme on studying the Sun, too. The solar corona is being studied in detail, and for this a mission is being readied by ISRO. The space agency is also studying how stars are formed.

On the many developments due to space sciences, he said miniaturisation of instruments is happening because of space science.