Planet Volumes via Unsplash
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), a probe that has been orbiting the red planet since 2014 as the country’s first ever Mars exploration mission, has been officially declared dead.
Researchers lost communications with the spacecraft after it entered a long eclipse period with Mars on October 2. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) soon afterward issued a statement declaring: “the spacecraft is non-recoverable, and attained its end-of-life.” The mission team suspects that the probe might have run out of fuel necessary to keep it going.
“ISRO deliberated that the propellant must have been exhausted, and therefore, the desired attitude pointing could not be achieved for sustained power generation,” the statement read. “The mission will be ever-regarded as a remarkable technological and scientific feat in the history of planetary exploration.”
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