The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) on Thursday announced that it would provide satellite tracking, telemetry and command services for the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) first Mars operation – the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).

The MOM is India’s first deep space mission and is aimed at showcasing the country’s technological capabilities, as well as orbiting Mars to search for signs of life and to study the planet’s surroundings. Should the orbiter reach Mars successfully, India would become the first Asian country to have a spacecraft orbiting the red planet.

India successfully launched the PSLV-C25 rocket carrying the MOM spacecraft at 11:08 on November 5, with Sansa’s Hartebeesthoek (HBK) ground station having acquired the satellite signal at 12:53, after which Sansa started providing the craft with transfer-orbit support services (Toss).

“The HBK station is ideally located to be the closest point to the satellite per pass,” Pandey Shyam, an Isro scientist stationed at HBK for the Toss duration, said.

MOM would orbit the Earth for 20 to 25 days before embarking on a nine-month expedition to Mars.

“The satellite is in its elliptical orbit and several manoeuvres are planned before the final Mars injection manoeuvre, which should take place around November 30,” Shyam explained. 

He added that Sansa had been able to perform orbit determination by ranging operations from the ground station, to place the Mars orbiter in the correct orbit to reach Mars, and that it would continue to perform various commands and manoeuvres from HBK.

The Mars orbiter had five unique instruments on board – a Lyman Alpha photometer, a Mars exospheric neutral composition analyser, a Mars colour camera, a thermal infrared imaging spectrometer and a methane sensor for Mars.

“What makes this mission different to others is the methane sensor. If methane is detected, it could be an indication of life,” Shyam said.

Sansa further stated that it was pleased to be part of the mission.

“By continuously upgrading our facilities, Sansa strives to provide the space industry with a range of services to accommodate various support requests. We successfully supported the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Mars Science Laboratory launch in 2011 and we look forward to being part of many more large-scale investments and opportunities,” Sansa Space Operations international business manager Tiaan Strydom said.