![]() At one point, the spacecraft was essentially shut down beginning Aug. During the Extended Science Phase, from November 2008 to December 2010, MRO faced a number of technical obstacles, primarily related to seemingly spontaneous rebooting of its computer four times in 2009. One of the early findings from imagery collected by HiRISE was the presence of liquid carbon dioxide or water on the surface of Mars in its recent past. All other instruments, however, returned vast amounts of uninterrupted and valuable data during the first two years of MRO’s operations, known as the Primary Science Phase, which ran from November 2006 to November 2008. Two months later, it began its primary science mission, joining five other active spacecraft in orbit or on the surface of Mars: Mars Global Surveyor, 2001 Mars Odyssey, the two Mars Exploration Rovers, and the European Mars Express.īy December 2006, the operation of one of MRO’s instruments, the Mars climate sounder, was suspended due to anomalies in its field of view. 11, 2006, put MRO in its final operational orbit of approximately 155 x 195 miles (250 × 316 kilometers). Soon after, the Centaur upper stage fired for a second time to dispatch its payload (and itself) to escape velocity on a trajectory to intercept with Mars.Īfter a seven-month trip and three course corrections, MRO approached Mars and, on March 10, 2006, fired its six engines (which displayed slightly reduced thrust), and successfully entered into a highly elliptical orbit around the Red Planet with parameters of about 265 x 27,650 miles (426 × 44,500 kilometers) with a period of 35.5 hours.Ī subsequent combination of aerobraking in the upper atmosphere and engine burns between April 7 and Sept. 12, 2005, MRO entered orbit around Earth. Along with the basic six instruments, MRO also carries an optical navigation camera and Electra, a UHF telecommunications package to provide navigation and communications support to other landers and rovers on the surface of Mars.Īfter launch, at 11:43:00 UTC Aug. Supplementary investigations have included studies of the Martian climate, weather, atmosphere and geology. The camera, called the high-resolution imaging science experiment camera, or HiRISE, is a 1.6-foot (0.5-meter) diameter reflecting telescope, the largest ever carried on a deep space mission. Its primary goals are to map the Martian surface with a high-resolution telescopic camera, at least partly to help select sites for future landing missions. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a large orbiter, modeled in part on NASA’s highly successful Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, designed to photograph Mars from orbit. ![]() 11, 2006: Began orbiting Mars In Depth: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter First spacecraft to photograph another spacecraft landing on Mars ( Phoenix in 2008).Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera (HiRISE)Ĥ. It also scouts for landing locations for Mars landers and serves as a critical relay station for science beamed back from the Red Planet.ġ.The spacecraft collects and relays daily science and weather data.Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had completed 60,000 orbits at Mars as May 15, 2019.It has been studying the Red Planet since March 2006. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is the second longest-lived spacecraft to orbit Mars, after 2001 Mars Odyssey.
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