Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2013
Mission Mars India's Quest For the Red Planet by Ajey Lele
Rating 8/10
November 5th is the date when the first Indian Mars mission Mangalyaan is set to launch after having been rescheduled last week.
"Mission Mars" is a short but good introduction to the mission's architecture, goals and background.
However it is not like any other book about a satellite or spacecraft, as it has a lot of material that is related to the subject, but is of more general interest than maybe the mission itself would be.
So even though one can find out that some of it's scientific objectives include studying the topography, morphology and mineralogy of Mars surface features and the composition of the Martian atmosphere and also what kind of instruments it will be using for doing so, then there are some added gems in this book.
For example if you've never heard about something called the "Asian Space Race" , then this book would illuminate you a little. Did you know that Israel has announced that they would not be aiming at Mars in the near future while Japan, China and India are the three countries in Asia that have shown interest in Mars missions this far.
Japan launched a Mars mission called Nozomi in 1998, but that failed during the Mars insertion phase.
China attempted its first Mars mission with the Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter, which was launched together with the Russian craft Phobos-Grunt, but the launcher failed and so didn't give the Chinese orbiter a chance to prove itself.
So now it will be ISRO's (Indian Space Research Organization) turn to have a go at Mars.
This brief book is in a way also an overview of why go to Mars at all and also why India decided on a Mars mission after their successful Chandrayaan mission. And for that Lele also describes the conditions on Mars and some of the other future mission to Mars that will be launch either in this launch window or the next one.
So despite being only 125 pages long it's surprisingly detailed and thorough. I found it a really enjoyable book.
Labels: Ajey Lele, Mangalyaan, Mission Mars