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India's Mars mission to last many years: top space official

Xinhua, September 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

India's Mars mission will last for many years as it has so far not experienced any failures, a top space official has reportedly said.

"Mars (mission) is expected to last for many years now because it has gone through solar conjunction also; so we don't see much of a problem," A.S. Kiran Kumar, chief of the state-owned Indian Space Research Organisation, told the media in the southern city of Bengaluru Monday.

He added, "We had planned it only for six months. Then we were not expecting so much fuel to remain after we completed our insertion activity. There is still a lot of fuel, all other subsystems are working fine and so far we have not had any failures."

India successfully launched its maiden mission to Mars on November 5, 2013, and the low-cost spacecraft was put into orbit around the red planet on its very first attempt on September 24, 2014. Endi