ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission Completes Eight Years in Orbit, Beyond Planned Six Month Lifetime

ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission Completes Eight Years in Orbit, Well Beyond Planned Six-Month Lifespan

India’s Mars Orbiter Craft has completed eight years in its orbit, well ahead of its designed mission life of six months. However, the follow-up plan on the ‘Mangalyaan’ mission to the Red Planet is yet to be finalised.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) – a technology demonstration enterprise – is the first interplanetary mission of the National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Launched on November 5, 2013, the probe was successfully inserted into the orbit of Mars in its first attempt on September 24, 2014.

To mark the latest milestone, ISRO on Tuesday organized a ‘National Meeting on Eight Years of India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)’ at its headquarters here, inaugurated by its Chairman S Somnath.

Space Commission members K Radhakrishnan and AS Kiran Kumar will deliver special speeches at the meeting, which will focus on the topics ‘Mars Orbiter Mission Observations’, ‘Scientific Achievements’ and ‘Future Directions in Inner Solar System Exploration’.

As the then chairman of ISRO, Radhakrishnan led the MOM (Mangalyaan) mission team.

ISRO came out with a ‘Declaration of Opportunity’ (AO) for the future Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM-2) in 2016, but officials acknowledged that it is still on the drawing board, with the upcoming ‘Gaganyaan’, ‘Chandrayaan’ – 3′ and ‘Aditya-L1’ projects are on the space agency’s current priority list.

The AO said: “It is now planned to have the next orbiter mission around Mars for a future launch opportunity. For experiments on an orbiter mission around Mars (MOM-2) to address the relevant scientific Proposals are solicited from interested scientists of India. Problems and Topics”.

Asked about the update on MOM-2, a senior ISRO official told PTI on Monday, “It is not in the approved list yet.”

“We need to prepare the project proposal and payload based on extensive consultation with the research community,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “It is still on the drawing board. But some more details and international cooperation is needed to finalize the mission”.

“It is a very satisfying and satisfying moment,” MOM Program Director M Annadurai told PTI about Mangalyaan completing eight years in orbit on Tuesday.


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