Mars Mission has fuel to last for years: ISRO chief

As the Indian space programme has touched the pinnacle with a league of few nations in the world, the desi low-cost Mars Mission has enough fuel to last for a few more years. Talking to the media on the sidelines of a programme at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru on Friday, ISRO chairman Kiran Kumar disclosed that the Mars Mission spacecraft that is in a rendezvous with the Red Planet for an extended period has enough fuel for it to last “many years”.

He said, “Still about 45 kg of fuel is left; we are hardly using the fuel, fuel requirement is very small. Originally, with the kind of fuel we had carried, we were not expecting that we will be able to complete the mission for more than six months. Now it will be surviving for many years.”“Right from launch till the spacecraft was inserted into the desired orbit, many difficulties could have been encountered. In which case we would have spent more fuel but it didn’t happen right from the beginning through the whole process,” he said.