It's time to rest: Mars Orbiter Mission has lost contact with Earth

Overview

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission ( Mangalyaan ) has lost contact with earth, it has run out of fuel and battery power after 8 years of flight.

Mars Orbiter Mission ( Mangalyaan )

The Mars Orbiter Mission^[1] ( MOM ), also called Mangalyaan (” Mars-craft “, from mangala, ” Mar s” and yāna, ” craft, vehicle “), was a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014.

It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO ).

It is India’s first interplanetary mission and it made it the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to do so on its maiden attempt.

The mission was a “technology demonstrator” project to develop the technologies for designing, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission.

It carried five scientific instruments. The spacecraft was monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network ( ISTRAC ) in Bengaluru with support from the Indian Deep Space Network ( IDSN ) antennae at Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Communications with Earth were lost on 27 September 2022, a little over eight years after orbital insertion.

The Future

As its working hours (eight years) have far exceeded expectations (six months) and the fuel and battery power has been depleted, it is expected that the Indian Space Research Organisation^[2] ( ISRO ) will soon officially declare the mission over.