Despite India’s modest achievements, the Mars rover mission launched by the Asian country is One of the most remarkable successes of the era of modern spaceflight.
The mission was launched in 2013, and was India’s first to Mars, and aims to reach orbit around the Red Planet, a trip that the United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency only succeeded before that.
Perhaps most importantly, India has demonstrated that a highly efficient spacecraft capable of reaching Mars can be developed on a small budget.
Rather than costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the Mars mission was developed for only regarding $25 million, through a process that Indian officials described as “economic engineering”, according to arstechnica and seen by Al Arabiya.net.
But all good things come to an end, and last weekend, the Indian space agency, ISRO, declared the mission over and the craft “unrecoverable”.
It came following a one-day meeting to discuss a problem with the spacecraft and whether it might be salvaged following losing contact with the spacecraft in April during a long eclipse when Mars moved between orbit and the sun.
“During the national meeting, ISRO discovered that the thruster for the craft was exhausted, and therefore, the desired target for sustainable power generation might not be achieved,” the space agency said in an update published Monday.
She added, “The spacecraft has been declared non-recoverable and has reached the end of its lifespan. The mission will be considered a remarkable technological and scientific achievement in the history of planetary exploration.”
The probe certainly exceeded expectations, and was originally designed for six months, and returned data to Earth for nearly 8 years.
Among his scientific contributions are regular images of the entire disk of Mars, in color, due to the spacecraft’s elliptical orbit.
Most spacecraft in orbit around Mars spend their time relatively close to the planet, looking directly at the surface.
The Mars Orbiter Mission also provided valuable data regarding the thin Martian atmosphere and observed dust storms.
Indian officials said more than 7,200 users have registered to freely download the data collected by the mission.
During the meeting, scientists and engineers discussed the challenge of keeping the craft alive for extended eclipse periods of up to 7 hours.
Much of the propellant on board the spacecraft had to be spent 5 years ago to reposition the spacecraft to survive these eclipses and ensure that enough sunlight reaches its solar panels.
After the success of the Mars Orbiter mission, India has allocated more resources to lunar and Martian missions, as the country plans several missions to the lunar surface, with the ultimate goal of returning samples.
Another rover around Mars is planned within the next few years, with a rover to follow during the second half of the 2020s.