ISRO officials said the Mars orbiter worked for over eight years, which is far longer than its six-month mission duration.
India's first interplanetary mission, "Mangalyaan," may have come to an end when its Mars Orbiter ran out of fuel and its battery died. The Rs 450 crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launched on November 5, 2013, using the PSLV-C25 rocket, and the MOM spacecraft was successfully sent into orbit around Mars for the first time on September 24, 2014.
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"Right now, there is no fuel left. The satellite battery has drained," sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told PTI. "The link has been lost".
However, there was no official announcement from ISRO, the space agency of India. Fueled up, ISRO had already been manoeuvring the MOM spacecraft into a new orbit to escape an approaching eclipse.
"But recently there were back-to-back eclipses including one that lasted seven-and-half hours," officials said on condition of anonymity, noting that all the propellant on board the ageing satellite had been consumed.
"As the satellite battery is designed to handle eclipse duration of only about one hour and 40 minutes, a longer eclipse would drain the battery beyond the safe limit," another official said.
ISRO officials said the Mars orbiter worked for over eight years, which is far longer than its six-month mission duration.
ISRO officials have said that "MOM is attributed with numerous laurels including cost-effectiveness, a short time of realisation, affordable mass-budget and miniaturisation of five heterogeneous research payloads."
K. Sivan, ISRO's former director general in 2021, has claimed that India's next mission, Mangalyaan-2, would be launched after Chandrayaan-3, despite an official denial from ISRO. The second trip to Mars has yet to be planned.
(With inputs from agencies)
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