After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel
Enlarge / Full-disk image of Mars captured by the Mars Orbiter Mission. (credit: ISRO)
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.