According to Tom Thorpe , the Project Manager for Mars Global Surveyor, the total cost of the mission so far is $377 Million.
For such a long mission and so much valuable data produced, this makes it a fairly low cost mission.
"The MGS mission was originally slated to last only one Martian year, equivalent to almost two Earth years. Its mission has been extended three times. The cost of the mission to date is $377 million, which includes the building of the spacecraft, launch and exploration, Thorpe said. The total costs of running the MGS program has dropped from $20 million a year to $6 million year. There are 20 engineers and scientists who have recently been working on MGS; ten of whom are at JPL. It has been a very economically produced program"
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