Will India's Mars mission succeed?

If all goes well, India will be the first Asian country to reach Mars in the very first attempt and the fourth country/space agency in the world to do so  

What I see around in this ISRO's Mission Operations Complex (MOX), Peenya, Bengaluru, could be best described as “nail biting moments”. The excitement is evident, tension is palpable, strain shows, yet the complex huddled with 60 odd scientists and engineers is enveloped in eerie silence. Every one moves about in a hustle, talks in whispers and sits literally on the edge of his or her swirl chairs.

After all, India's first ever Mars mission is in its crucial phase. Just few minutes ago they have test fired the LAM engine. The next hours are break or make for India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM or as popularly called Mangalyaan). If all goes well the spacecraft will enter into the Martian orbit, making India the first Asian country (Chinese and Japanese missions failed en route), to succeed in the very first attempt, and the fourth country/agency in the world to reach mars (after NASA, Russian/USSR and European Space Agency). There is much at stake; prestige, technology and, of course, science.

For the past few days the consoles and control systems are (wo)manned day night, 24x7. In a welcome break to the stereotype, I see many women engineers as capably and confidently maneuvering the spacecraft operations as men in this centre. Noticing my initial astonishment, a woman engineer smiled and asserted with pride “it is we who baby sit spacecrafts”.

Wake up call for LAM

The next few hours are crucial; a set of critical manoeuvres have to be executed with precision success. Firstly, hibernating 440 Newton liquid apogee motor (LAM) thruster engine should wake-up to the call. LAM is indeed a time tested engine used by ISRO in many of its missions to move satellites from temporary orbit to its final destination. It was the same engine that put Chandrayan-1 on Moon orbit.  In the Mangalyaan mission, this same engine was used seven times to raise the orbit of the spacecraft and finally give it the impulse necessary to hurl it towards Mars.