Three years of Mars Orbiter Mission: Made to run only for six months, India's Mangalyaan still going strong

Moneycontrol News

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or Mangalyaan completed three years in the orbit of the red planet on Sunday. Interestingly, the initial tenure of the mission was six months, given the limited resources it flew with.

One of the first pictures it sent to earth.

The orbiter entered the Martian orbit with 40kg of fuel in 2014. Till then, there have been two alterations with its orbit and speed to save it from, a comet, and in January this year to avoid risky eight hours of an eclipse.

Mangalyaan is built to last only 1 hour 40 minutes on its batteries. Beyond that, it needs a constant supply of sunlight to produce energy.

By June, it had completed 388 orbits around Mars and has sent back over 715 images to earth. The spacecraft has successfully manoeuvred through a 'blackout' and a 'whiteout' period, during which connection to earth was interrupted for more than 14 days each.
The maneuvres have left it with 13kg of propellant which will keep it going for a while. ISRO has declared it as healthy and all five payloads on it are functioning.