Emily LakdawallaSep 16, 2014

Mars Orbiter Mission arrival timeline

Edit Sep 21: Some of the times in the Pacific Time column were not correct when this was originally posted. I have fixed the error. Sorry and thanks to Sameer for pointing out the error in the comments.

Mars Orbiter Mission's fated arrival day is approaching fast! ISRO released a timeline of the critical orbit insertion events yesterday, and I thought it would be handy to people for me to convert this to some other time zones. Also, one item in the ISRO timeline made it clear that all of the times they are mentioning in public communication are spacecraft event time -- that is, the time on the spacecraft's clock when the events take place. But we on Earth will be 224 million kilometers from Mars on that day, and it will take 12.5 minutes for the signals from the spacecraft to reach Earth. So I have also added those 12.5 minutes to the times listed below, making them Earth Received Time. These are the times on our clocks when we will hear from the spacecraft...or not. If these times change at all, I will update this blog entry with new information.

EventTime
(rel)
Time
(IST)
Time
(CEST)
Time
(UTC)
Time
(PDT)
MAVEN orbit insertion burn start -- not part of Mars Orbiter Mission, of course, but an important Mars event in this time period!-2dSep 22
07:07:00
Sep 22
03:37:00
Sep 22
01:37:00
Sep 21
18:37:00
Mars Orbiter Mission test fire main engine -1d 17hSep 22
14:42:00
Sep 22
11:12:00
Sep 22
09:12:00
Sep 22
02:12:00
Change over to Medium Gain Antenna-3hSep 24
04:30:02
Sep 24
01:00:02
Sep 23
23:00:02
Sep 23
16:00:02
Forward rotation starts-21mSep 24
07:09:02
Sep 24
03:39:02
Sep 24
01:39:02
Sep 23
18:39:02
Eclipse starts-5m 13s07:24:4903:54:4901:54:4918:54:49
Attitude control with thrusters-3m07:27:0203:57:0201:57:0218:57:02
MOI start 07:30:0204:00:0202:00:0219:00:02
Mars occultation start+4m 18s07:34:2004:04:2002:04:2019:04:20
Telemetry off+5m07:35:0204:05:0202:05:0219:05:02
Eclipse ends+19.48m07:49:3104:19:3102:19:3119:19:31
MOI end+24m 14s07:54:1604:24:1602:24:1619:24:16
Reverse maneuver start+25m 14s07:55:1604:25:1602:25:1619:25:16
Mars occultation ends+27m 38s07:57:4004:27:4002:27:4019:27:40
Telemetry resumes+30m 14s08:00:1604:30:1602:30:1619:30:16


For more information about orbit insertion events, read this guest post by Srinivas Laxman.

Mars Orbiter Mission
Mars Orbiter Mission Image: ISRO

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