Third orbit raising manoeuvre on Mars Orbiter performed

Third orbit raising manoeuvre on Mars Orbiter
performed
Press Trust of India | 09-Nov-2013 11:20 AM
Chennai: The third of the total of five orbit raising
manoeuvres of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft was
performed early on Saturday morning, raising its
apogee, the farthest point from Earth, to over 71,000
km.
The manoeuvre started at 2:10 AM on Saturday and
raised the spacecraft's apogee from 40,186 km to
71,636 km with a burn time of 707 seconds, ISRO said.
The space agency had performed the first two
manoeuvres in the last couple of days, in the series of
five scheduled on the Mars mission.
The fourth and fifth operations would be performed on
November 11 and 16 to raise the apogee to 1,00,000
km and 1,92,000 km respectively.
After the successful completion of these operations, the
mission is expected to take on the "crucial event" of the
trans-Mars injection around 12.42 AM on December 1.
ISRO's PSLV C 25 successfully injected the 1,350-kg
Mangalyaan Orbiter (spacecraft) into orbit around Earth
about 44 minutes after a textbook launch at 2.38 PM
from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on
Tuesday, marking the
successful completion of the first stage of the Rs 450-
crore mission.