Monitoring the five spacecraft will be Nasa's Canberra Deep Space Network (DSN), ready with manoeuvres to handle eventualities. And playing a key role in this will be the DSN's Ashish Soni, who provides engineering support for systems used in telemetry, tracking, commanding and monitoring the spacecraft.
The Canberra DSN, owing to its particular geographic position, generally picks up messages sent by all spacecraft and then transmits them to other countries' DSNs, such as Isro's Byalalu facility on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It will handle MOM's communication till the mission is completed.
Considering the sensitive nature of the time period when Comet Siding Spring arrives at Mars, the Canberra DSN is working on a tracking strategy to provide reliable communication at that time. The comet's particles would be travelling at Mars relative velocity of 56 km per second."All the antennas at Canberra will be pointed at Mars to track the orbiters, which includes Isro's MOM," Soni, who joined the Canberra DSN in 2007, explained.
In an email interview to TOI, Soni, a graduate from the Bhopal-based Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyala, said, "Our 70m station will have five receivers set up to capture signals from all five orbiters simultaneously. MOM will be communicating continuously throughout the period of greatest risk via the Canberra 34m station, in addition to the planned receiver on the 70m station."
According to Soni, the Canberra DSN will only intervene in case of emergency "if communication to the spacecraft is lost for extended period".
Referring to the important role played by Canberra during the critical Mars orbit insertion, he said that after the spacecraft completed its burn manoeuvre, it took 12 minutes for the confirmation signal to reach earth from the spacecraft, following which they locked up to the spacecraft telemetry.
"We had full confidence in the mission's success at this point. Soon after it was verbally communicated to Isro," Soni said.
According to him MOM's Mars orbit insertion, similar to its near perfect launch in November 2013, was a demonstration of Isro's fine systems engineering and perfect team work.
"DSN (Canberra) went to great lengths in accommodating Isro's requirements to ensure a successful MOM mission. This included training staff, shuffling around priorities and accommodating last minute changes,'' he said.
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