Bengaluru: Exactly 75 days from Saturday, India’s Mars spacecraft is scheduled to make its rendezvous with the red planet.
The Mars orbiter spacecraft has travelled 525 million km on its heliocentric arc to the red planet, following its launch from Sriharikota earlier this year.
Radio signals from Earth now take 15 minutes to reach the orbiter and return, said Indian Space Research Organisation officials.
The orbit insertion is planned 75 days from Saturday, ISRO said on its Facebook page.
In the last crucial milestone on June 11, ISRO performed the second trajectory correction manoeuvre on the orbiter as a mid-course correction to keep the spacecraft on course.
ISRO has planned another similar manoeuvre in August before the Mars orbit insertion process begins in September.
The ambitious Rs 450-crore Mars mission was launched from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on a PSLV rocket. It was scheduled to reach the the red planet’s atmosphere by September 24.
