Chennai: After an extended eight year performance that exceeded beyond expectations, ISRO’s Mangalyaan/Mars Orbiter Mission has gone into oblivion due to lack of fuel and drained out battery.
In an update on the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) at a National Meet organised by ISRO recently on completion of its eight years in the Martian orbit, it was discussed that despite being designed for a life span of six months as a technology demonstrator, the MOM has lived for about eight years in the Martian orbit with a gamut of significant scientific results on Mars as well as on the Solar corona, before losing communication with the ground station, as a result of a long eclipse in April 2022.
During the national meet, ISRO deliberated that the propellant must have been exhausted and therefore, the desired attitude pointing could not be achieved for sustained power generation.
“It was declared that the spacecraft is non-recoverable and attained its end-of-life”, ISRO said today.
The mission will be ever-regarded as a remarkable technological and scientific feat in the history of planetary exploration, it added.
At the meeting, Shantanu Bhatwadekar, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, in his prelude address, said the MOM was launched on November 5, 2013, and after completing 300 days of interplanetary journey, it was inserted into the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014.
Equipped with a suit of five scientific payloads onboard, during these eight years, the mission has gifted significant scientific understanding on the Martian surface features, morphology, as well as the Martian atmosphere and exosphere.
Former ISRO Chairman Dr.K.Radhakrishnan in his special address said the unique lessons learnt from this mission; despite being realized in a remarkably short turn-around time, the MOM mission has added enormous values to the domains of science, technology, and management.
It was an enormous feat to have reached the Martian orbit successfully in the maiden attempt, he added.
Another former Chairman A.S.Kiran Kumarmentioned about the criticality of the payload operations in the Martian orbit, given the conflicting requirements of the payload operations, radio delay, and white-out and black-out conjunctions.
In his inaugural address, S Somanath, ISRO Chairman and Secretary, Department of Space summarized the major scientific feats of the mission.
He said the MOM has gifted an understanding of the composition of several gases in the Martian exosphere, quantified the altitude where the Martian atmosphere has a transition from the CO2 rich regime to atomic Oxygen-rich regime during the local evening.
The mission is also credited with the discovery of ‘suprathermal’ Argon-40 atoms in the Martian exosphere, which gave some clue on one of the potential mechanisms for the escape of atmosphere from Mars. artners.
