Launched in 2013, India’s maiden mars mission Mangalyaan, or the Mars Orbiter Mission, has finally come to end. The orbiter entered Mars orbit in September 2014 and was designed to last six months. Exceeding the expected lifespan by several times, the orbiter reportedly has run out of fuel and battery power, and ISRO is expected to make an official announcement of the end of the mission soon.
Ground control has lost communications with the spacecraft, fuelling speculations about the end of its life. While the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still trying to figure out whether it has run out of power or it is a communication problem caused by the change of direction of the antenna, multiple sources have said it would not be possible to recover the orbiter and re-establish communication.
The orbiter went into a long eclipse, and after that, there was no communication from it. The satellite had gone into eclipse earlier also and performed automatic manoeuvres to come out of eclipse and re-establish communications. But if there is no fuel left, it would not be able to perform those automated movements. It is also possible that the antenna is pointing somewhere else while changing its direction to try to re-establish communication with earth after the eclipse as per pre-installed software.
According to reports, sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have said that there is no propellant left in the orbiter. Its batteries have also drained out as the solar panels could not charge them due to prolonged eclipses.
“Recently there were back-to-back eclipses including one that lasted seven-and-half hours. As the satellite battery is designed to handle an eclipse duration of only about one hour and 40 minutes, a longer eclipse would drain the battery beyond the safe limit,” according to the unnamed source.
Earlier the satellite came out of eclipse phases on its own as per autonomous processes without any intervention from the earth.
The Mangalyaan was launched in a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on 5 November 2013 and reached Marsh on 24 September 2014. It was ISRO’s first interplanetary mission. At a budget of Rs 450 crore ($74 million), it is one of the most cost-effective space missions. Elaborating on how low-cost the mission was, PM Modi in June 2014 said that the cost of India’s Mars mission was less than Hollywood movie Gravity based on a space mission. The movie had come out in 2013 and its budget was around $100 million.
The Mars mission was designed to last just six months, and the probe has sent a huge volume of data from the red planet in these eight years. The spacecraft carries five scientific instruments, Mars Color Camera (MCC), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA) and Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP).
The mission objectives included exploration of the planet, study of Martian atmosphere especially to find the presence of methane and CO₂, and studying the dynamics of the atmosphere. The orbiter has sent photos of Mars and its satellites among other data.
ISRO is planning a Mars Orbiter Mission 2 or Mangalyaan-2 mission, but it is still on the drawing board, and it will be taken up after the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
