After proving that the probe can also be developed at an ultra-low cost and orbited Mars for 8 years, India’s Mars orbiter is now out of contact with ground control, presumably Mars’ recent 7.5-hour eclipse caused the battery to completely run out, The rescue situation was not optimistic, and the Indian authorities announced the end of the mission.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), launched on November 5, 2013, and entered Mars orbit on September 24, 2014. It is the first Asian country to successfully reach Mars orbit. mission to Mars.
Although the overall achievement is small compared to other probes, this probe proves that India can develop durable and powerful Mars probes on a limited budget, such as understanding the composition of several gases in the Martian exosphere, quantifying The altitude at which the Martian atmosphere transitions from a carbon dioxide-rich state to an atom-rich oxygen state during the local night.
Compared with the cost of other Mars missions, which often cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the development cost of the Mars orbiter is only one-tenth of that of NASA’s probe, about $25 million. It is the most economical Mars exploration program so far, and it is cheaper than making a Hollywood movie Inexpensive, and as a technology demonstration, the Mars Orbiter was only intended to run for half a year, but it did not expect to work for 8 years.
But it’s time for the probe to come to an end. The Mars orbiter’s batteries are only designed to handle an eclipse that lasts about 1 hour and 40 minutes, but in April the rover experienced a 7.5-hour eclipse that drained the battery and potentially ran out of fuel, with ground control The center lost its continuity and fell silent, and although sources said they were still trying to determine whether the probe ran out of fuel or the antenna could not communicate, for whatever reason, the probe could not be recovered.
Following the success of the Mars Orbiter, India will dedicate more resources to missions to the Moon and Mars. For example, multiple lunar surface missions and sample return missions are planned, as well as another Mars orbiter in the next few years, and a Mars rover in the second half of the 2020s.
(Source of the first image: Indian Space Research Organization)
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