The engine burn lasted a little over 23 minutes. On 24 September 2014, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission slowed sufficiently to be captured by Mars, turning an interplanetary journey into an orbit around another world. ISRO’s contemporary account recorded a 440-newton main engine working with eight smaller engines. The spacecraft had arrived on its first attempt. [1]
Mangalyaan was an orbiter, carrying instruments above the Martian surface. It did not land, collect samples or establish the presence of life. Its central achievement was the ability to send a spacecraft across interplanetary space, navigate it into the right orbit and keep operating it at a distance that made immediate instructions from Earth impossible. [4]
A mission across two governments
The project began before Narendra Modi took office. In his Independence Day address in August 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that the Cabinet had approved the Mars Orbiter Mission. ISRO launched it aboard PSLV-C25 from Sriharikota on 5 November 2013. [2] [3]
A parliamentary reply that December described the successive manoeuvres used to raise the spacecraft’s Earth orbit and place it on a trajectory towards Mars. By the time the government changed in May 2014, the probe was already travelling between the planets. The September arrival belonged to a continuing ISRO programme, with approval and launch under the UPA and successful insertion under the succeeding government. [3] [1]
The sanctioned budget was ₹450 crore, covering the spacecraft, launch vehicle and ground segment. The same reply distinguished that sanction from expenditure incurred so far. Comparisons with foreign missions cannot, by themselves, establish equivalent scientific scope: instruments, launch arrangements and mission objectives differ. [3] [4]
More than an arrival photograph
ISRO described the mission’s objectives as primarily technological. Autonomous operation, communications and the demanding capture manoeuvre were capabilities to be demonstrated, while five scientific instruments studied the surface and atmosphere. The colour camera could photograph the whole Martian disc from the spacecraft’s elongated orbit. [4]
The scientific work continued beyond the initial six-month design life. At its 2022 review, ISRO described findings on atmospheric composition, energetic argon atoms and dust storms, alongside a Mars atlas assembled from camera observations. These were research results from particular instruments, rather than a claim that every question about Mars had been answered. [5]
The spacecraft stopped; the archive remained
Communication was lost after a long eclipse in April 2022. At the September national meeting, ISRO concluded that propellant was probably exhausted and that the spacecraft could no longer point itself to sustain power generation. It was declared non-recoverable. [5]
By then the agency reported more than 7,200 registered data users and about 27,000 science-data downloads. The operating spacecraft had reached its end; the observations it returned remained available for research. [5]