The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), India's first interplanetary mission and low-cost Mars spacecraft completed 1,000 Earth days in Martian orbit on Monday June 19,2017, well beyond its designed mission life of 180 days.
The spacecraft is expected to circle the planet for another five years as it has still got about 15kg of fuel left.
It is said that 1,000 earth days correspond to 973.24 Mars Sols (Martian Solar day) and the MOM completed 388 orbits.
On September 24, 2014, India successfully placed its Mars orbiter, also known as Mangalyaan, in the orbit around the Mars in its very first attempt, joining an elite club of countries with expertise in space technology.
MOM was launched to study the Martian surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life on the Red Planet.
The spacecraft has five scientific instruments - Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS).
The total project of the cost of the MOM may be up to Rs 454 crore (US$71 million).
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