India’s Mars mission completes 1,000 Earth days in orbit

The country’s low-cost Mars spacecraft completed 1,000 Earth days in its orbit on Monday, well beyond its designed mission life of six months or 180 days.

“The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) completes 1,000 earth days in its orbit, today (June 19, 2017) well beyond its designed mission life of six months,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said.

It said 1,000 earth days correspond to 973.24 Mars Sols (Martian Solar day) and the MOM completed 388 orbits.

The satellite is in good health and continues to work as expected, it said, adding that scientific analysis of the data received from the spacecraft is in progress.

India had on September 24, 2014 successfully placed the spacecraft in the orbit around the Mars in its very first attempt, joining an elite club of countries with expertise in space technology.

The Isro had launched the spacecraft on its ninemonth-long odyssey on a homegrown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, 2013 and it had escaped the Earth's gravitational field on December 1, 2013.

Citing surplus fuel as the reason, the Isro had in March 2015 first announced that the spacecraft's life was extended by another six months.

Later in June 2015, its Chairman A S Kiran Kumar had said it has enough fuel for it to last “many years”.

The ~450-crore MOM was launched to study the Martian surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life on the Red Planet.