These Indian women scientists sent a rocket to Mars for an amount less than the budget of the film "Martian"

November 5, 2013 to Mars launched a rocket. It was the first interplanetary mission of India, " Mangalyan ", and it was very risky. Only 40% of all missions to Mars sent by large organizations — the USA, Russia, Japan, China — were crowned with success. None of the space organizations managed to achieve success from the first time [here the author made a mistake: ESA successfully sent the Mars Express mission with the help of Russian missiles in 2003 - approx. trans.]. The ISRO space research organization could not boast of a large budget: NASA’s Maven Mars probe cost $ 651 million, and the Indian mission budget was $ 74 million. For comparison, the budget of the film " Martian " was $ 108 million. In addition, ISRO sent its rocket just 18 months after the start of work on it.

A few months and millions of kilometers later, the orbital spacecraft prepared to enter the orbit of Mars. This was the key point. If the ship made the exit from the wrong angle, if the error was only one degree, it would either crash on the surface of Mars or fly past it and get lost in space.

At this time on Earth, a team of scientists and engineers was waiting for a signal from the ship. The mission developer, Rita Karidhal, has been working for 48 hours in a row, supported by waiting for a result. As a child, Minal Rohit watched television space missions. Now, Minal was expecting news from the orbital ship, which she developed together with her colleague, Moomita Dutt.
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When the signal came, the flight control room was filled with cheers. Working in a room like the deputy director of operations Nandini Harinat says, “you can no longer look for thrillers in search of thrill. They will be present in your daily work. ”

It was not only mission success. A picture of scientists celebrating success in the flight control room became viral. Girls in India and beyond acquired new heroines: they wear a sari, flowers in their hair and launch rockets into space.

The rocket will fly away, and no one will wait

When Mumita Dutta was in the ninth grade, she became interested in the properties of light. This obsession led her to the path of the engineer. Being in the eastern city of Calcutta [since 2001, the official name is Kolkata / approx. transl.] in 2006, she read in a newspaper that India was going to launch its first lunar mission. It was a chance to recoup an opportunity that had been missed half a century ago. ISRO was founded in the late 60s, on the wave of the space race. But the space organization in a newly independent country had extremely few resources, and the agency could not take part in flights to the moon. The Indian moon mission of 2008 has been preparing for a long time, and has become a turning point. "I thought that the people who worked on it were very lucky." Mumita declined the offer to take graduate school abroad and moved to another part of the country to join ISRO to work on the lunar mission.

When ISRO in 2012 made an announcement of the Martian mission, the organization’s main goal was to deliver the spacecraft to Mars orbit and conduct scientific experiments there. The mission needed to be prepared in record time, given the limited resources. The rocket needed to be launched at the moment when the distance between the Earth and Mars was the shortest, in mid-2013. Only 18 months was devoted to the planning, construction and inspection of all equipment. The orbital ship had to go into an elliptical orbit around Mars from behind the planet, making communication with the Earth impossible at the most critical moments of the mission. This required the development of a fully autonomous system. The ship could accommodate 5 sensors for scientific experiments. The catch was that their total weight should not exceed 15 kg.

Moomin was an expert at sensors. She was assigned the task of developing and testing the first and unique tool for detecting methane on Mars.



It turned out that the sensor that Mumita was working on fell right in the yard. In 2014, the Martian all-terrain vehicle from NASA, Curiosity, found a sharp increase in methane concentration at its location. Since the presence of methane could be a sign of the presence of life or water on Mars, it was an exciting discovery. But to build meaningful conclusions, a scientific tool was needed that could detect even a small amount of methane anywhere on the surface of Mars, working without interruption for several years in a row. The search for patterns in the collected data is compared by Mumita with “the search for God - of course, in this case our scientific goal serves as God”

The requirements for the sensitivity of the sensor determined its design . Prior to working on this mission, Mumita had already developed more than ten spacecraft payload devices, but this case was different from previous ones. “We were developing something that no one has ever done before, so every day a new challenge appeared,” she says.

Mumita and his colleagues decided that to record such subtle measurements, it was necessary to choose an optical filter that had never been used in interplanetary missions before: the Fabry-Perot resonator . It was not tested in such conditions, but it was sensitive enough to detect even a small amount of methane, and light enough so that the final sensor could weigh no more than 3 kg. Mumita thought over the concept, developed and tested the resonator. Because of the importance of this experiment, the chairman of the board and the director of ISRO were present.

Under the gaze of the chiefs of Mumit, worried, began a trial run. “I put the resonator in the test setup, eager to know if it will give us the characteristics we need,” she says. She inserted a cell with methane between the resonator and parallel rays of light. The resonator signal has changed. “When I saw this, I thought:“ Wow! ”, And could not hold back emotions. We actually built a device that could detect methane. We knew it would work! ”

The sensor was to fly to Mars, and it appeared thanks to Mumite. It only remained to live for several months, consisting of 18-hour working days, to make sure that the mission was successfully launched, given its unrealistic optimistic schedule. But the time frame Mumita did not confuse.

“Yes, they worked a lot,” she says, “but when I think that I’m working on a sensor that will benefit my fellow citizens, I feel it’s worth it.”

"Fantasy will become a reality, and you will not know about it"

India is a land of contrasts. There is India with a growing economy, there is India with a huge income gap . In India alone, girls can grow up and become developers of spacecraft, the other does not ensure their right to education and safety. One India follows the shortest path to Mars, the other remains inaccessible due to bad roads.

Minhal Rohit grew up in the 80s in the small town of Rajkot [as it is in Indian - to call agglomeration with a population of more than 1.28 million "small town" - approx. transl.], and somehow on TV, she saw the launch of the satellite. She was so impressed that she thought: "kaam karna hai toh aisa karna hai". If you need to do work, do it.

If an Indian woman cares about her career goals, then Indian culture may seem limited to her, and her aspirations - rebellious. But Minal's parents did not allow this culture to rule in their home. When someone advised her not to continue her studies, since she “would not be able to find a suitable couple for marriage,” her father did not want to hear anything about it. “My father was firm,” she says. He said: "She will find a mate herself if she is not helped, but she will continue to study." In Rajkot, the choice of engineer profession was unusual at that time, especially for women, and Minal decided that she would be more suitable for medical education. Parents transferred her from school to Gujarati to English. When she did not pass the exam for admission to medical school, they supported her attempts to enroll in engineering. That is what she dreamed of since childhood.



Minal began working at ISRO with providing medical and educational services in rural India through its agency satellites — in those places, thousands of people need such services. She was lucky that both her parents and her husband supported her in her work. But her passion for space remained unsatisfied. “Life is a comfortable thing, and in my work I constantly have to find ways out of the comfort zone,” she says. Otherwise, "fiction will become a reality, and you will not know about it."

The mission to Mars was, perhaps, the most serious way out of the comfort zone.

An incredibly tight time frame required innovation. A typical mission is like a baton. Auxiliary teams, such as the Moomin team, build their devices and transfer them to the system integration team. It already takes care of that all subsystems - optics, electronics, mechanics - work harmoniously together and meet the performance criteria. Then this system is passed on to be integrated into the qualification model of an orbital spacecraft undergoing thorough testing. The end result, the ship, becomes a copy of this model.

“You can imagine this system as a family with an older and younger son,” says Minal. - Junior gets all the attention, and senior suffers all difficulties. If the elder passes all the strict tests, then the younger will also pass. Usually, the flight model is conceived after the completion of work on the qualification model. ”

But with the Martian mission, everything was wrong, she did not have time to carry out the baton. The process was more like juggling. “The qualification and flight models were built in parallel,” says Minal.

Her task was to help integrate methane sensor components into a complex scientific tool. Usually all this work would be done with a qualification model, and with a margin for error, which could be corrected in the final, flight model. But since the processes overlapped, there was no margin for error.

“Space does not forgive mistakes,” she says. “We call it a zero defect.” So, when, at the last stage, the tools went to check in the framework of the qualification and flight model, Minal recalls, “we were under heavy pressure. It was impossible to make mistakes anywhere, in any of the connections wires. I would say that it required even more patience than I show, raising my son. ”

Minal has carefully developed plans and procedures for integrating the methane sensor subsystem. Usually, when the subsystems come to the Minal laboratory, they have already been fully tested and certified. In this mission, she recalls, “the teams involved in the subsystems still tested them. We had to take their word for it, without documents and certificates; the engineer simply said: “OK, I’ve tested everything, now it’s your turn”. And that's it! ”She adds, laughing. “I prayed that when I pressed the button, it would turn on and not explode!”

There were no explosions. The orbital ship was preparing to launch into space.

"I looked into the darkness and thought about what was behind her"

The average distance between Earth and Mars is 225 million km. This means that the signal from the orbital ship reaches the control center in 12 minutes. 12 agonizing minutes before you can know that something went wrong, and 12 more endless minutes for your correction team to reach the ship. If your ship is on the way to death, this 24-minute gap can be fatal for it.

Therefore, the Martian ship must be able to work autonomously. With each subsequent mission, the ISRO team increases its capabilities. The moon mission of 2007 allowed her to work out how to overcome the gravity of the Earth. The mission to Mars has added automatic software, difficult enough to recognize and correct any error that may occur in space.

The mission developer, Rita Karidhal, managed the system design and development. “It is like a human brain. It receives signals from sensors that resemble your eyes, ears, nerve endings. If there is a problem somewhere in the body, your brain reacts instantly. Here is a device for the ship we needed to create from scratch in ten months. We had to take each element in turn - sensors, activators, motors - and understand how it can behave incorrectly. ”

When Rita first became interested in space, she did not think that her work would be so high-tech. But then she was only three years old. “I used to ask why the moon grows and shrinks. I looked into the darkness and thought about what was behind her, Rita recalls. “I thought space science was astronomy, star observation.” In fact, everything is very technologically. "

Nineteen years ago, Rita left her hometown of Lucknow and moved across the country to become a scientist. “It was not an easy decision, but my parents always supported me,” she says.

On the launch day in November 2013, these dreams became reality when Rita looked at the monitors in the mission control room. Its autonomous system faced a final check.

Along with her, Nandini Harinat, deputy director of operations, was in the room.

Nandini did not have any particular moment that gave rise to her interest in science. “My mother was a math teacher, and my father loves physics. In my life, science has always been forever, ”she says. Mathematics was so often discussed in the house that Nandini believes that she met her before she learned to speak. Together with her father, they studied the constellations until she learned to recognize the different stars in the night sky of Bangalore . “Of course, I never imagined that I would work at ISRO, but 21 years ago it just happened.”

In the project "Mangalyan" Nandini was engaged in mathematical calculations of the trajectory of the flight to Mars.

During launches, as Nandini says, "I always had butterflies in my stomach." After the launch of the orbital spacecraft, the team needed to conduct a series of critical operations so that it could escape from the Earth's attraction and go to Mars. Nandini describes them as “one-try operations. Either you are doing everything right, or not. ” The ship followed a predetermined course, turned around the Earth several times, launching engines on each whorl, and finally gained enough speed to get out of the sphere of gravity of the Earth at exactly the right angle and head for the red planet. The first phase of the mission was completed.

Nine months later, the orbital ship was ready to go into Mars orbit.

During this time, Nandini worked in the control center to make sure that the probe went along the intended trajectory, which she helped plan and count. If the capsule had deviated from it, the team had the necessary funds to return to the course. While Nandini poured over the Mars mission, her daughter took school final exams. Nandini was returning from the control center by midnight, and then woke up at 4 am to study with her daughter.

By September 24, 2014, there was no longer any room for adjustment: it was time for Mangalyan to manage on his own, using the system Rita was involved in developing. At 7 am that day, the ship sent a signal confirming the launch of the on-board sequencer. He was ready to go into the orbit of Mars. The ship orientated with the help of activators and went to the entry position at the right angle with an error of up to one degree.

After 21 minutes, as planned, the engines started. Four minutes after that, the signal stopped going - the ship disappeared behind Mars. In the case of entry into orbit at the right angle, he would send a signal to Earth. Otherwise, there would be no signals from him.

“Every minute,” recalls Rita, “we tracked the data, trying to calculate if there were any anomalies in them.” But, of course, it was already impossible to influence the course of the mission. For the next 26 minutes, the teams Rita and Nandini waited in deathly silence, being in the flight control room.

Then at 8 am a signal came to Earth. And the world saw honoring not only Indian science, but also amazing women who were at its center.

"All over the world, half of the mind is contained in women"

Astrophysicist Vera Rubin , who discovered dark matter, is known for its three assumptions about women in science:

1. Science has no problems that a man could solve, and a woman could not solve.
2. Around the world, half of the mind is contained in women.
3. Everyone needs permission to practice science, but for historical reasons, this permission is more often given to men than women.

Nandini sadly agrees that this is still the case for most of the women in her country. “Perhaps it's our culture,” she says. “She puts so much pressure on a woman that even if she has ambitions and talent, she cannot realize them without full support at home.”

But women from ISRO may have influenced the situation. They attribute the opportunities that have arisen to them at the expense of the support provided to them in their families. Statistics from the Indian Space Agency show that they are followed by others. Today, according to Mumita, “the number of women involved in space science at ISRO just flew up like a rocket. This shows that women choosing this line of business receive more support. ”

Indeed, today, almost a quarter of ISRO technicians are women. Much remains to be achieved, but space missions are so complex that everyone should work actively. If you are aiming for the stars, you cannot build a glass ceiling between the Earth and the cosmos.

These thoughts launch orbital spacecraft into space, and scientists are brought to the scene. The cycle can go on - the relay race is on, whose time has come - when the young girls see the sari in the control center and realize that they themselves can get there.

“If you have a strong desire, it will come true one way or another,” says Minal Rohit, whose sensor continues to measure methane content on Mars. “I always say, work with short-term goals so that you have the motivation to achieve them. And somewhere in the depths of the brain there may be a main life goal, a statement about what you want to achieve. One big dream and many little ones. ”

“Helping ordinary people is my big dream,” she says, “and Mars was small. Now I think: what next? ”

The sky is no longer a barrier.