India’s Mars Orbiter craft has run out of propellant and its battery drain beyond the safe limit, fuelling speculation that the country’s maiden interplanetary mission ‘Mangalyaan’ may have finally complete its long innings.
The Rs. 450 crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launch onboard PSLV-C25 on 5th November, 2013, and the MOM spacecraft was successfully insert into Martian orbit on 24th September, 2014 in its first attempt.
As per ISRO :
“Right now, there is no fuel left. The satellite battery has drain,”.
“The link has been lost”.
There was no official word from the country’s national space agency, headquarter here.
With fuel on board, ISRO had performing orbital manoeuvres on MOM spacecraft to take it to a new orbit to avoid an impending eclipse in the past.
Official said :
“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,”.
ISRO officials note that the Mars orbiter craft function for almost eight years, well beyond its design mission life of six months.
Official said :
“It has done its job and yielded significant scientific results,”.
The objectives of the mission were primarily technological and included design, realisation and launch of a Mars Orbiter spacecraft capable of operating with sufficient autonomy during the journey phase; Mars orbit insertion/ capture and in-orbit phase around Mars.
The MOM, a technology demonstration venture carried five scientific payloads (total 15 kg) collecting data on surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature and atmospheric escape process.
The five instruments are:
- Mars Color Camera (MCC),
- Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS),
- Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM),
- Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA),
- Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP).
ISRO officials pointed out :
“MOM is credited with many laurels like cost-effectiveness, short period of realisation, economical mass-budget, and miniaturisation of five heterogeneous science payloads”.
Highly elliptical orbit geometry of MOM enable MCC to take snap shots of ‘Full disc’ of Mars at its farthest point and finer details from closest point.
The MCC has produce more than 1000 images and publish a Mars Atlas.
Plans on a follow-on Mangalyaan mission to the red planet are yet to be firm up.
ISRO came out with an ‘Announcement of Opportunity’ (AO) for future Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM-2) in 2016 but officials acknowledged that it’s still on the drawing board, with the coming ‘Gaganyaan’, Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya – L1 projects being in the space agency’s current priority list.
The AO had said :
“It is now planned to have the next orbiter mission around Mars for a future launch opportunity. Proposals are solicited from interested scientists within India for experiments onboard an orbiter mission around Mars (MOM-2), to address relevant scientific problems and topics.”
Senior ISRO official told on being asked about an update on the MOM-2 :
“Not in the approved list as of now”.
Official said :
“We need to formulate the project proposals and payloads based on the wider consultation with the research community,”.
“It’s still on the drawing board. But needs some more details and international collaboration for finalising the mission.”
