Youth await their tryst with Red Planet

An young India awaits in avid anticipation as Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) gears to etch a new milestone in the annals of Indian space programme and its chequered history. 

Wednesday (today) will see one of Isro’s most ambitious endeavours — injection of Mars orbiter — captured live carrying aspirations of over billion people for its fruitful culmination, specially school and college students, seeking a career in science, who will watch with bated breath the endgame of the country’s historic Mars Orbiter Mission. 

While first manoeuvre will begin as early as 4:17 am when the antenna is changed, live telecast will commence at 6.56 am with the second operation when the forward rotation of the orbiter starts. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with India’s top space scientists, will be among key participants witnessing the event when Mars orbiter makes its epochal sojourn. 

In the minutes between 7.12 am when the orbiter would disappear in an eclipse and 7.53 am when Isro receives signals from orbiter from inside Mars orbit, time would have come to standstill in Science City and elsewhere, only to rouse in joy and jubilation on the singular and spectacular achievement.

Several schools in City will have their students glued to television sets to catch live how orbiter changes trajectory to get into Mars orbit. 

If Sreekumar V R said he would ensure his family would arise early to watch the mars mission, so that I will be able to explain it to my elder child the operations at work, another, a parent of 15-year teen daughter said it was important for children to be exposed to frontiers of science. Stating we will get up early to catch up with the mission, Paramesh Nanda, another said, it is live science that makes the mission attractive.

With space science, a new career frontier among today’s GenX, the Isro’s Institute for Space Science & Technology at Thiruvananthapuram, has seen steady rise of enrolment in recent times.