After eight years around Mars, India has lost contact with its space probe
The planet Mars (illustrative image).
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The Indian space agency has just announced that it has lost all communication with its probe sent around the planet Mars.
It's the end of an extraordinary mission which will have lasted more than eight years and has proved to be a real success for this country until then little accustomed to such interplanetary adventures.
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With our correspondent in India,
Sébastien Farcis
This mission was only planned for six months but the Indian probe will have finally rotated for eight years around Mars.
A feat on several levels, says Pallava Bagla, science journalist and co-author of a book on Mars exploration.
“
India was the first country to place a probe around Mars on its first try.
And in my view, this fulfilled one of his primary geopolitical objectives of this mission: to succeed in doing so before his hostile neighbor, China,
he underlines.
In addition, the placement in orbit was so precise that the probe saved fuel and was able to rotate for much longer than expected.
»
A robot rolling on the moon
This probe, called
Mangalayaan
, also returned some interesting data.
“
One of the successes was to obtain an image of the complete disk of Mars, which is rare,
explains the journalist.
And this photo was published on the cover of National Geographic.
»
Now, the Indian space agency is preparing to launch next year a robot rolling on the Moon to analyze its soil.
This after a first failure in this mission three years ago.
Then in 2024, India plans to send an orbital probe to Venus.
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