Liquid Apogee Motor engines are used for orbital adjustment manoeuvres of satellites/spacecraft in orbit. Photo: X/@ISRO by way of PTI
A small however highly effective engine going by the acronym ‘LAM’ may have a critical function to play within the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) upcoming Aditya-L1 mission meant to examine the solar.
The profitable operation of LAM, brief for Liquid Apogee Motor, is important to ISRO’s plans to place the Aditya spacecraft in a halo orbit at Lagrangian level L1.
Developed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), the ISRO centre for liquid and cryogenic propulsion in Thiruvananthapuram, LAM has performed an vital function in missions, together with the 2014 Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) Mangalyaan and the more moderen Chandrayaan-3.
In easy phrases, LAM engines are used for orbital adjustment manoeuvres of satellites/spacecraft in orbit. For the Aditya-L1 mission, the ISRO will probably be utilizing a LAM an identical to the one used within the Mars and moon missions, says LPSC Director V. Narayanan.
Aditya-L1 is the primary ‘space-based observatory class Indian solar mission to study the Sun,’ in accordance to the ISRO.
The ISRO is planning to launch the mission utilizing a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL) on September 2. Once the Aditya spacecraft exits the earth’s sphere of affect and heads towards its vacation spot — the Langrangian level L1 which is 1.5 million km away — the LAM engine will shut down for the perfect half of the four-month journey.
The propulsion system of the spacecraft includes the 440 Newton LAM engine plus eight 22 Newton thrusters and 4 10 Newton thrusters which will probably be intermittently fired. The thrusters will probably be used to appropriate the orientation of the spacecraft because it traverses the huge vacancy of house.
The massive problem earlier than the ISRO is restarting LAM on the exact second for ‘braking’ the spacecraft because it closes in on its vacation spot and nudging it into the specified halo orbit at L1. During the Mangalyaan mission, this critical manoeuvre, ‘waking’ the LAM engine after an prolonged ‘hibernation’, had given ISRO scientists nail-biting moments.
‘’The propulsion module system on Aditya-L1 is an identical to the one used on Chandrayaan-3. The LAM engine is comparable. Its propellant mixture (mono-methyl hydrazine (MMH) and MON3 (MON, brief for blended oxides of nitrogen) too is identical. Its quantity is totally different, therefore propellant tank sizes are additionally totally different,’‘ says Dr. Narayanan.
About 1.5 million kilometres from the earth between it and the sun is L1, one of the five Lagrangian points or ‘equilibrium points’ within the sun-earth system. Aditya is to be positioned in a halo orbit at this vantage level in house to perform research with its seven scientific payloads.
