The Underworld

Times of India dated June 08, 2015:

"ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) on Monday bid a 15-day farewell to ground stations as a result of what is known as Mars conjunction — a phenomenon during which the sun will disrupt communication between the two.

Mars orbits the Sun in 1.881 Earth years, moving slightly slower than Earth due to its higher orbital radius. Because of the two different orbital rates of Mars and Earth, it takes 780 Earth days (on the average) for the two planets to align with Sun in between the two.

In fact, the conjunction for Mars Orbiter Spacecraft began on May 27, 2015 and will extend up to July 01, 2015.  No commands are transmitted to the spacecraft during this period for safety reasons. All payload operations are also suspended.  Health of the spacecraft is normal. This is the first time since its launch on November 5, 2013 that MOM will be cut off completely from ground stations for such a long period, making it quite a challenging period for the MOM team," the TOI report said. 

With the success of MOM, India wishes to join the race for the manned mission to Mars in a few years of time along with the other countries belonging to the so called Space Club. As on today there are two scientific rovers on the surface of Mars beaming signals back to Earth: “Opportunity” of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and “Curiosity” of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. The five orbiters currently surveying the planet are: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM, from India) and MAVEN. As done by ISRO for MOM, NASA also switched off all the onboard science instruments and stopped transmitting commands to its Mars spacecrafts and the two rovers (Curiosity and Opportunity). 

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Mars is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having craters, volcanoes, valleys, deserts, and possibly polar and mid latitude ice caps. The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, as is the tilt that produces the seasons. 

Goals and objectives of all these Mars Exploration Programs are to help determine whether Mars could ever have supported life, as well as determining the source of water, if any, and to study the climate and geology of Mars. These programs will also help prepare for human exploration of the planet establishing human colonies there in future. 

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June 08, 2015 (Earth-based date)

Underground Mars Laboratory

The Conference Room in the Mars Laboratory deep under the surface of the planet Mars was packed to its capacity with the Martian scientists and experimenters. The Director of the Laboratory was to make an important announcement about the 2-week expedition of the Martian surface starting on that day.

The Director arrived right on time and immediately started his address:

“My fellow Martian Scientists gathered here this morning, 

“I am glad that starting from today we are going ahead with our Expedition of studying the surface of our Planet. It will last for only two weeks and we need to make use of our time very efficiently. 

As we all know, we are carrying out this exercise periodically for the last one hundred years or so. We had realised that studying the changes, if any, on the surface of our planet periodically is very important for our survival below. In olden times we never ventured to go out to the surface of our planet. Initially when we started our surface expeditions we had no restrictions on the duration of these expeditions, limited only by our physical limitations of surviving in the harsh and hostile conditions on our planet’s surface.  Of late, however, our forefathers started warning us about the possible threat from our neighboring planet which its habitats call as Earth. They have developed a lot of interest in our planet and possibly want to occupy it. 

"We have collected this information after receiving, decoding and analyzing the radio broadcasts received from their planet. They are very good at radio communication. We immediately decided that no radio waves will go out from our planet that will let the Earthlings know about our existence. We thought it wise to let them believe that Mars was a dead planet and it had nothing to offer. 

"It takes about 300 days for their vehicles to reach here and so far they have not succeeded in sending any living being from their planet to our planet. They however landed two carts on our surface that could move about and study our planet condition for exploring it further. In addition, we believe that five of their vehicles are going round our planet at a certain height repeatedly and keeping a watch on our planet.  

"This very threat compelled us to limit the period of our surface exploration to two weeks. This is the window of time we get after approximately every 700 days as Sun comes between us and the Earth during the orbital motion of both the planets around Sun. During the 2-week period they cannot see us. We have confirmed information that five of their space vehicles that are going round our planet are forced to go in the Sleep Mode during the next 2-week period and all the scientific instruments on board are shut down. 

"We cannot say this about the two carts that can stroll and collect data on our planet and store it and send to Earth later when Sun moves away from the direct path between us and them. We must avoid going anywhere near these carts during our expeditions.

"At the same time we have to take every precaution that we do not leave any of our instruments or gadget on the surface of our planet once the expedition was over. The observers on the Earth should not get any clue of our existence here or else they will expedite their efforts to reach here as early as possible. Remember, once they are here, we will be doomed. We are too weak in number and technological progress to give them any fight. That will be the end of our species.

"Keep all this in mind when you go up there and return safely in time without leaving any trace of our activities carried out during the expedition. Let them continue to think that Mars had nothing to offer to them and it was not worth-visiting by their species putting them under a great danger of travelling for 300 days in space. 

"Our species is evolved to survive only underground deep below the planet's surface. We have adopted to survive under limited atmosphere leaked from above, water extracted from ice caps near the mid latitude regions and artificial illumination that is much less than that we would face on the surface above. Our progress in science and technology is only hundred year old. During these hundred years we have gathered a lot of information on our solar system and the existence of other planets in the solar system. We operate our telescopes from inside the craters which are interlinked with the tunnels which we have dug ourselves. Our civilization is clustered around below the mid latitude region of our planet.

"We do not know whether our life came into existence on this planet or we came from some other place in the universe. But we have accepted us as Martians. We are peaceful by nature and like to live in a closed society. We use the technology of communication by wires and as such we are happy with it. Our needs are minimal and we are happy the way we have evolved.

So go up there and gather as much information as possible on the condition on the surface above. You will be doing a great service to our future generations. We need to protect our children and grand children from our neighboring planet as long as we can! 

"Good Luck and Happy journey to the Martian surface!"    

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By second week of July 2015 all the five spacecrafts (including MOM) orbiting Mars became operational and started sending the data to the ground stations on Earth. None of the spacecrafts and the two rovers found anything unusual that could have happened on the surface of Mars during the conjunction period. In fact the data received from Mars is so predictable that a debate has already started amongst the scientific organizations and their funding agencies whether we should carry out any further exploration of Mars and that the visit to Mars by human astronauts was really that necessary. Except for the technological challenge of building a powerful rocket to take the human crew to Mars and bring them safely back, Mars doesn't seem to offer anything spectacular to the mankind!    

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