Mangalyaan & the Indian Space program 🚀
I’ve recently been on a spree of watching patriotic Akshay Kumar movies: Gold, Airlift, Bell Bottom. And remember watching from this niche, Special 26, Baby and Padman. It’s a pretty good niche — Bollywood, patriotism and inspiring.
One such movie that stuck a chord with me is Mission Mangal. A movie about sending a satellite all the way to Mars — 400 million Km, on a rocket designed to take satellites to low earth orbit — 500Km altitude. Very inspiring! So I had to read up.
The plot
It begins before the Mars launch. It’s Dec 2010 and Akshay kumar is the program director of a rocket launch called Fat Boy. The launch fails. So he is moved to another program — the never-to-be-picked-up mission to Mars. The project to relaunch the Fat Boy is given to an Indian American NASA veteran returned to India, played by Dalip Tahil.
Of course Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan turn the mars mission around. And against many odds they make it happen in under three years — by Nov 2013. If Fat Boy had succeeded, they would’ve had a powerful rocket to use. So instead, they use the less powerful PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket ingeniously — they use earth’s gravitational pull to escape earth’s gravitational pull!
Frugal Innovation
The challenge is that to get to Mars, we have to first escape earth’s gravitational field. If Fat Boy in the movie had succeeded, we could’ve used it, as it was a more powerful rocket and could get us to an altitude of over 35,000 Km. Without it, we have to use the PSLV rocket which can only get us to altitude of about 500Km. The first of the three images above shows how the frugality was applied. Instead of getting to the height and velocity directly, the satellite was placed in low earth orbit at about 250Km.
With calculated firing, the orbit was made more and more elliptical over the course of 4 weeks until it reached a farthest point of about 200,000Km before it reached the speed needed to leave earth’s sphere of influence. This method is called Hohmann Transfer Orbit. The movie uses the metaphor of making puris to explain the concept. To make puris the stove doesn’t need to be on all the time. It can be switched on intermittently as the oil loses its heat thereby saving gas.
The second image above shows the heliocentric (sun centred) trajectory from earth to mars. The third image shows the trajectroy of the satellite around mars from 2014 to 2019. Notice that the images are actual trajectories with the date and time stamp on the top left and position and velocity at the bottom right. It’s quite something, isn’t it!
The pitch
One of my faviourite scenes is a meeting that Akshay Kumar highjacks dramatically (as he does many-a-time) to pitch the Mars mission. The chinese mission to mars had just failed. They had used a Russian rocket which Dilip was going to use as well.
Akshay Kumar asserts that this is our opportunity to get ahead of china. When Dilip jokes about it, it’s time for an inspiring speech. He shows a picture of early days of ISRO where two people are assembling a rocket. On the right he says is APJ Abdul Kalam, and on the left he says is the chairman of ISRO whom he was addressing in the scene. We must give Mars a shot for patriotism and despite frugality!
The details
It is indeed Abdul Kalam on the right but on the left, it is in fact R Aravamudan, who later became not the chairman of ISRO (as the film suggests), but the director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The ISRO chairman Akshay Kumar was speaking to would have been K Radhakrishnan. The project director of the Mission to Mars, whom Akshay Kumar was playing would have been Mylswamy Annadurai.
The Chinese mars mission was in fact not only using a Russian rocket (Zenit) to leave earth but also a Russian lander (Fobos-Grunt). They launched Yinghuo-1 satellite from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. We were going to use the same lander for Chandrayaan 2 along with a russian designed rover onboard our GSLV rocket. The Chinese launch faiure got Russia to take a closer look at their landers and rethink their priorities. It delayed Chandrayaan 2 mission, but allowed us to race the Chinese to Mars!
The mission at the beginning of the movie that failed cannot be Fat Boy because that would mean it’s the rocket GSLV Mark III (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle), which in fact was only launched after the Mangalyaan mission, and did not fail. So the mission they were referring to must’ve been the GSLV F06 mission. I wasn’t able to find any information on if the program director of that mission was the same as the Mission to Mars.
Despite these specifics, I do love the details through the film, the models of the rockets, the locations, the leadership conversations to motivate the team, the courage to keep reiterating and fighting for a vision, despite the challenges of a tight budget. I love the nods to Abdul Kalam, Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, and early days of the Indian Space program. And of course the metaphors used to explain the trajectory of the orbitor, the PSLV and GSLV vehicles, the sensors and design of the orbitor, and the communication challenges.
Worth it?
The movie The Martian cost ₹800 Cr and generated ₹4800 Cr in revenue. It is quite the feat! To put costs in perspective, this movie cost ₹32 Cr and generated ₹290 Cr in revenue. The Mission to Mars cost ₹450 Cr. That’s less than ₹4 per Km travelled! And what spectacular photography:
The GSLV and PSLV rockets
GSLV and PSLV rockets are designed to place satellites at different altitudes above earth. GSLV is designed to place satellites in higher geostationary orbits around the earth. Satellites at this height stay stationary with respect to a point on the surface on earth. In our case, it means the satellite would always be above india being able to recieve and broadcast a signal to all of India. This makes it great for telecommunications, navigation, tv and radio broadcasting, weather forecasting, and disaster warning and Search and Rescue operations. GSLV rockets are also great for lunar and interplanetary explorations.
PSLV rockets are designed to place satellites in low earth orbits. At this altitude, satellites can image the earth at a high rate with the sun always shining. Applications cover agriculture, water resources, urban planning, rural development, mineral prospecting, environment, forestry, ocean resources and disaster management. So Google Maps images are from satellites in low earth orbit making observations and videos like this possible:
Why do we launch from Sriharikota?
In the 1960s, when the space program was being setup, radio communication was new. It was observed that in some places on earth, there was magnetic interference with the radio waves. These places were the north and south poles of course, but also at the magnetic equator where a stream of electrons formed the electrojet was observed. The the only way to study it was to launch rockets with sensors from places in the magnetic belt. Vikram Sarabhai was studying them as a physicist.
Since the magnetic equator passes through India, the first launch site was setup in Thumba, in Kerala. However as we started to launch more rockets with the goal to place them in orbit for communications and observation, we needed a launch site on the east coast. This enables rockets to take advantage of earth’s rotational velocity as earth spins from west to east. Rockets can reach orbit with lesser fuel. This is how the launch site at Sriharikota on the coast of Andhra Pradesh came to be.
Although I wonder why the first site could also not be east coast somewhere in Tamil Nadu through the magnetic belt. If there was I wonder if the electrojet would have affected communications with the rocket during launch. However, the cities and mobile networks seem to be fine despite it. Would love to know more about this.
Manufacturing, Research and mission control centres are in Ahmedabad because it was home for Vikram Sarabhai, and Bangalore because Satish Dhawan was also heading IISC when he took over after Sarabhai’s demise, and Bangalore evolved to be a science and software hub, so more centers continued to sprout in Bangalore.
The impressive Sarabhais
The Sarabhais were a wealthy, visionary and connected industrilist family. Three of eight siblings of the second generation were instrumental in setting up various institutions: Vikram Sarabhai was a physicist and helped setup and was the first chariman of both ISRO and IIM-A. He worked closely with Abdul Kalam, Homi Bhabha, and C.V. Raman. Gautum and Gira Sarabhai helped setup and were directors of NID-A. They invited Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller, Louis Kahn, Frei Otto, and Le Corbusier to influence the curriculum at NID. And all of them were setup at the start of 1960s when the siblings were around 40 years old.
