HARROW: Isro’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) on Monday bid a 15-day farewell to ground stations as a result of what is known as Mars conjunction — a phenomenon during which the sun will disrupt communication between the two.
This is the first time since its launch on November 5, 2013 that MOM will be cut off completely from ground stations for such a long period, making it quite a challenging period for the MOM team.
On Monday, the spacecraft also completed 259 days in the Martian orbit.
The communication blackout will remain till June 22. MOM will operate autonomously till then. Simulations carried out earlier have made the Isro team optimistic that there will be no problems. All commands were pre-loaded in it in preparation for the blackout. The spacecraft has about 37kg fuel in reserve.
To prevent the spacecraft from receiving garbled commands that could be misinterpreted or prove harmful, ground control stopped transmitting them. In fact, MOM’s entry into the blackout phase kicked off on May 27 when it was telemetering data only for three hours a day.
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