Nearly a decade after its launch in 2013, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission has run out of fuel and will cease operations. The mission, which was the first Mars mission by an Asian country, demonstrated a different approach to planetary science by being built and launched on a much smaller budget than is typical for Mars missions from larger space agencies like NASA or the European Space Agency.
In discussions at an ISRO national meeting, scientists there declared that the mission will now have run out of propellant and so it would no longer be possible to orient the spacecraft. “It was declared that the spacecraft is non-recoverable, and attained its end-of-life,” ISRO wrote. “The mission will be ever-regarded as a remarkable technological and scientific feat in the history of planetary exploration.
ISRO was able to launch its low-cost mission by reducing testing, simplifying design, and taking a modular approach to the hardware. There were also long working days expected of the scientists and engineers, and a focus on scheduling to prevent costly delays, according to an interview with Forbes by Koppillil Radhakrishnan, chairman of the ISRO who oversaw the mission development.