Skip to footer

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks 10th anniversary of launch

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off from Cape Canaveral 10 years ago last Wednedsay, and in the following decade has sent back a treasure trove of data about the Red Planet.

|
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Among the many discoveries by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since the mission was launched on Aug. 12, 2005, are seasonal flows on some steep slopes, possibly shallow seeps of salty water. This July 21, 2015, image from the orbiter's HiRISE camera shows examples within Mars' Valles Marineris.
|
NASA
An Atlas V launch vehicle, 19 stories tall, with a two-ton Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on top, lifts off the pad on Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The sharpest set of eyes peering down at Mars launched toward the Red Planet 10 years ago Wednesday.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) blasted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Aug. 12, 2005, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The probe reached Mars in March 2006, then performed more than 400 dips into the planet's thin atmosphere over the next five months during an "aerobraking" campaign that shifted its orbit from highly elliptical to nearly circular. [Amazing Photos by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]

MRO began its science mission — which was originally pegged for one Martian year, or about two Earth years — in November 2006. Nearly a decade later, the spacecraft is still going strong in Mars orbit,  searching for signs of past water activity, scouting out sites for future robotic and human missions and helping relay data from NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers back to Earth.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found evidence of diverse watery environments on early Mars, some more habitable than others. MRO has discovered that Mars' south polar cap holds enough buried carbon-dioxide ice to double the planet's current atmosphere if it warmed. It’s caught avalanches and dust storms in action," MRO project scientist Rich Zurek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

"The spacecraft's longevity has made it possible to study seasonal and longer-term changes over four Martian years," Zurek added. "These studies document activity such as moving dunes, freshly excavated impact craters — some of which expose subsurface ice — and mysterious strips that darken and fade with the seasons and are best explained as brine flows."

MRO is equipped with six different science instruments, including the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, which is capable of revealing features as small as a desk on the Red Planet's surface.

The spacecraft returns more data to Earth than the other six active Mars missions — Opportunity, Curiosity, NASA's Mars Odyssey and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiters, Europe's Mars Express and India's Mangalyaan probe — combined, NASA officials said.

"Ten years after launch, MRO continues full science and relay operations," Kevin Gilliland, spacecraft engineer for the mission at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, said in the same statement. (Lockheed Martin built MRO and helps JPL operate the spacecraft.)

"We've kept our operations efficient. We've been able to bring back an astonishing amount of science data — more than 250 terabits so far," Gilliland added. "Even after more than 40,000 orbits, the mission remains exciting, with new challenges such as taking close-up images of a passing comet last year and supporting next year's InSight landing."

That comet was Siding Spring, which buzzed Mars last October, sending material raining into the planet's thin atmosphere. And "InSight" refers to NASA's InSight Mars lander, which will touch down in September 2016 to probe the Red Planet's internal structure.

MRO isn't the only NASA Mars explorer to celebrate an anniversary this month. On Aug. 5, Curiosity marked three years on the surface of the Red Planet.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on Space.com.

Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Follow CSMonitor's board Astronomy on Pinterest.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks 10th anniversary of launch
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0816/Mars-Reconnaissance-Orbiter-marks-10th-anniversary-of-launch
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe