This weekend, the Indian space agency ISRO announced that India’s Mars Orbiter Mission was “non-recoverable,” after communication was lost with the vehicle in April.
Launched in 2013, it was the first successful Mars mission built by an Asian country, previously only the US, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had done it.
An impressive achievement was that India’s Mars mission didn’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but only $25 million through “frugal engineering.”
The orbiter, originally designed for a lifetime of six months, survived for almost eight years and continued to send data back to Earth.
