Tiki Rajwi By

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As a small man-made object closes in on Mars millions of kilometres deep in inter-planetary space, one man here is keeping his fingers tightly crossed.

V Adimurthy, scientist, passionate bicyclist and a former Deputy Director at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thumba, had headed the team which crafted the ‘concept paper’ for ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).

With just days left - D-Day is September 24 - for MOM (Mangalyaan) to rendezvous with the red planet, Adimurthy is predictably very thrilled.

“Fine! Excellent! Everything has gone smoothly so far. We might have to do a small course correction on September 14,” he told ‘Express’ on Monday.

“But the critical operation is reviving LAM (the Liquid Apogee Motor on MOM) for the ‘Mars Capture’,” he said. By Mars Capture he means the placing of MOM in orbit around Mars.

“Firing the LAM, it’s been inactive for months, that’s the nub,” he explains. Along with top scientists at Indian Space Research Organisation’s units in the state capital, Adimurthy too will leave for Bangalore soon, from where the MOM’s activities are to be monitored.

The Mars Mission Study Team headed by Adimurthy had worked on the concept paper for the mission for around a year and it was gruelling work as all of it was uncharted territory for Indian Space Research Organisation. The team had around 100 members, including 20 core members, from all ISRO centres.

“The mission had to travel for around 300 days, covering an enormous distance. The Moon Mission (Chandrayaan I) was a matter of just days,” he recalls the challenges faced by the team.

“Communication with the satellite and tracking it posed problems. For example, at the moment it takes around 11 minutes for a signal from earth to reach it. So we had to have on-board autonomous control systems,” he said. The team studies past missions undertaken by various countries, including the US and Russia. The results weren’t too encouraging.

“The failure rate of Mars missions was substantial - almost 50 per cent,” he said.

A recipient of the Padma Shri, Adimurthy hails from Rajahmundry, Seemandhra. The young scientist, who joined ISRO in 1973, has been living in Kerala for close to 35 years. Adimurthy, who has served in various capacities at ISRO, is familiar to people here as the scientist who rode to office on his bicycle. Today, he reviews launch missions and coordinates ISRO’s fledgling inter-planetary projects.

Recently, ISRO published a book written by V Adimurthy - ‘Optimisation in Aerospace Dynamics.’