ISRO finally confirmed that the Mangalyaan has run out of fuel and battery, putting an end to the legendary eight-year-long Mars orbiter mission.
The historic Mangalyaan mission came to its end on Monday after eight legendary years after the craft ran out of fuel and the battery went dead. Mangalyaan was India’s Mars Orbiter Mission and Asia’s first space probe to reach the Martian orbit, creating history.
Confirming the end of the mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation said on Monday that the Mars Orbiter craft has lost communication with a ground station, it's non-recoverable and the Mangalyaan mission has attained end-of-life.
The ISRO gave an update on the Mars Orbiter Mission and the national meet held on September 27 to commemorate the MOM, on the event of completion of its eight years in the Martian orbit. The question still remains – how did the Mangalyaan craft run out of fuel?
According to experts and reports, the Mangalyaan craft ran out of fuel due to back-to-back eclipses, especially the one which continued for over seven hours. Let us explain how these eclipses might have caused the end of the Mangalyaan mission by India.
In this context, the word eclipse refers to phases in which the satellite did not receive any sunlight to recharge itself through the solar cells. Due to the lack of sunlight, the power to transmit and receive signals from the Earth was lost by the Mars Orbiter craft.
The battery of the Mangalyaan was only designed to handle an eclipse that lasted for one hour, but the repeated and prolonged eclipses were most likely responsible for draining its battery, as per experts.
Earlier, ISRO 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, the national space agency said.
The statement by ISRO reads, “It was declared that the spacecraft is non-recoverable, and attained its end-of-life.”
(With PTI inputs)
READ | Mangalyaan runs out of fuel after eight years: Know what's next for India's Mars Orbiter mission
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 "Mangalyaan: Did repeated eclipses lead to shortage of fuel, battery in ISRO's Mars Orbiter craft?")
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