We have some sad news. This weekend the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that they had lost contact with the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, which had been orbiting the red planet since September 2014, lasting a whole eight years longer than its six-month mission.

As of press time, ISRO had not confirmed the precise reason that the spacecraft failed, but they will do so soon. One possible reason is that they lost contact with Earth while MOM was eclipsed by Mars. The spacecraft has eclipses from August to September every year, once every orbit and lasting an hour. MOM was designed to manage this by itself but may have run out of fuel or accidentally pointed its antenna away from Earth during an automated recovery maneuver after an eclipse ended.

The spacecraft achieved a lot during its mission, including discovering energetic argon in the diffuse atmosphere of Mars and that there is more oxygen than carbon dioxide in the atmospheric region between 260 and 280 kilometers.

MOM was an incredible mission. The program’s budget was 4.5 million Indian Rupees, equivalent to just under 9 million U.S. Dollars in 2022, and an absolute bargain for what they achieved, considering their goal was to just enter Mars orbit.

This is not the end of ISRO’s Mars ambitions, though, because the Mars Orbiter Mission 2 will launch No Earlier Than 2024.

More Information

Designed to last six months, India’s Mars Orbiter bids adieu after 8 long years (Times of India)