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| Image credit: www.deccanchronicle.com |
It has been a month since the Mars
Orbiter Mission started its research around the red planet. India has joined
the elite group of countries which succeeded in reaching MARS. India astonished
the world with its frugal yet successful Mars mission that was never ever
thought of. ISRO has also broken the record of executing this herculean
project in mere 15 months duration. So, why did India hurry in making its
maiden voyage to our nearest neighbor?? Is it the unreasonable desire to prove
its capabilities to the world? The answer is a big NO. The factor that made
ISRO to execute this mission at a faster rate is the space dynamics. Earth
takes 365 days to revolve around the sun while mars take about 687 days to
complete a revolution around the sun. So we can say that a Martian Year (A time
period of one year on Mars) is approximately equal to 1.88 Earth years (A time
period of one year on earth). So, by the time Mars finishes its one revolution,
Earth is already at the verge of completing its second revolution. Also these
two planets revolve in the orbits with different orbital characteristics.
Mars’s orbit has more eccentricity than that of Earth. To sum up all these
points from orbital geometry to the relative dynamics between these two planets
we can arrive at a conclusion that these two neighbouring planets come closer
to each other every two years and thereby providing a chance for the launch of
spacecraft. This time frame in rocket science’s jargon is termed as the LAUNCH
WINDOW. It is impractical to launch a spacecraft out of the launch window and
if you miss it once you should wait for another 2 years for the arrival of next
launch window.
