ISRO successfully raised Mars Orbiter Spacecraft's Orbit

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on 7 November 2013 performed the first orbit raising manoeuvre of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft. The spacecraft was fired for 416 seconds by the command from the Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, Bangalore from the 440 Newton Liquid Engine of the spacecraft. With this engine firing, the spacecraft`s apogee (the farthest point to Earth) was raised to 28825 km, while its perigee (nearest point to Earth) was at 252 km. Earlier, Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was launched on 5 November 2013.   

A series of five orbit raising operations during the Mars mission will be performed, of which the second and third raising operations would be performed on 8 November 2013 to apogee 40000 and 71650. The fourth and fifth raising to apogee of one lakh km and 1.92 lakh km will be performed on November 11 and 16 November 2013. After the operations will be completed, the mission is expected to take on the crucial event of the trans-mars injection on 1 December 2013.

The Mangalayaan, the Mars orbiter of 1350 kilogram was successfully injected by ISRO’s PSLV-C25 into the orbit around Earth in 44 minutes after launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on 7 November 2013.

The International Designator or the NSSDC ID of India's Mars mission is 2013-060A.

International Designator

The International Designator is the international naming convention for satellites. The name consists of launch year, a 3-digit incrementing launch number of the year and up to 3 letter code that represents the sequential identifier of a piece in a launch. It’s also known as COSPAR designation and in the United States as NSSDC ID.