Mars Orbiter raised to over 1 lakh km

Chennai : India’s Mars Orbiter was successfully raised to over 100,000 km apogee (farthest point from earth) Tuesday morning, the space agency said.

In a statement issued, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said: “Fourth supplementary orbit raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 05:03:50 hrs (IST) Nov 12, 2013, with a burn Time of 303.8 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in apogee is from 78,276 km to 118,642 km.”

The velocity added to the Mars Orbiter was 124.9 metres per second.

The activity was additional one against ISRO’s plans of having only six manoeuvres since a hitch was faced during the orbit raising activity Monday morning.

The Mars Orbiter was not able to be raised to the required level Monday morning as the fuel to the motors stopped when the systems were operated.