It was not expected to last more than six months or 180 days in the space, but the Mars Orbiter has done it. ISRO’s Mars mission has survived 1000 earth days in space orbiting around the Red Planet against its calculated lifetime, and is expected to last for some ‘more years’ due to enough fuel left in it.
Launched on November 5, 2013, by the PSLV-C25 rocket, the spacecraft took nine months to reach Martian orbit. The Indian space agency placed MOM in orbit around Mars on September 24, 2014, with a mission to collect the data on Mars and send it back to the Earth. So far, the onboard camera has produced more than 715 pictures.
However, the journey wasn’t all that smooth. The MOM had faced ‘blackout’ due to solar conjunction from June 2, 2015 and to July 2, 2015, and a ‘whiteout’ when the Earth was between the Sun and Mars, The ‘whiteout’ had prevented the spacecraft to make any contacts with earth from May 18, 2016 to May 30, 2016.
MOM was launched with about 852Kg of fuel load. Later in March 2015, the spacecraft was confirmed to contain several amount of fuel to extend the mission by another six months. Surprisingly, now, it’s going way beyond ISRO’s expectations itself.
ISRO said 1000 earth days corresponds to 973.24 Mars Sols (Martian Solar day). In this period of time, Mars Orbiter completed 388 orbits and is expected to go for “more” in the next few years with the 14-15kg of fuel left in it, the space agency added.
