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After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel - Ars Technica

After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel - Ars Technica

After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel - Ars Technica
Oct 03, 2022 1 min, 5 secs

Despite its modest overall achievements, India's Mars Orbiter Mission is one of the more notable successes of the modern spaceflight era. Launched in 2013, it was the first Mars mission built by an Asian country to reach orbit around the red planet—only the United States, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had done so before.

And perhaps most importantly, India proved that a durable, capable Mars spacecraft could be developed on a shoestring budget.

Instead of costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the Mars mission was developed for only about $25 million, through a process described by Indian officials as "frugal engineering.".

But all good things come to an end, and this weekend the Indian space agency, ISRO, announced that the mission was "non-recoverable." The update came following a one-day meeting to discuss the spacecraft and whether it could be salvaged after communication was lost with the vehicle in April during a long eclipse when Mars moved between the orbiter and the Sun.

Among its scientific contributions were regular images of the full disk of Mars, in color, due to the spacecraft's elliptical orbit.

The Mars Orbiter Mission also provided valuable data about the thin Martian atmosphere and observed dust storms.

Following the success of the Mars Orbiter Mission, India committed more resources to lunar and Martian missions.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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