Latest Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Stories

Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments.Strewn boulders and rippled sand lie on the floors of two shadowy, steep-walled pits. Mounds in another region appear to be mud volcanoes, which may have brought fine-grained material to the surface from deep underground. In the Tharsis volcanic region, the intersection...

Light-colored mounds of a mineral deposited on a volcanic cone more than three billion years ago may preserve evidence of one of the most recent habitable microenvironments on Mars.Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enabled researchers to identify the mineral as hydrated silica and to see its volcanic context. The mounds' composition and their location on the flanks of a volcanic cone provide the best evidence yet found on Mars for an intact deposit from a hydrothermal...

A growing bounty of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals that the timing of new activity in one type of the enigmatic gullies on Mars implicates carbon-dioxide frost, rather than water, as the agent causing fresh flows of sand.Researchers have tracked changes in gullies on faces of sand dunes in seven locations on southern Mars. The periods when changes occurred, as determined by comparisons of before-and-after images, overlapped in all cases with the known winter build-up...

PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The ground where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck last year holds evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Stratified soil layers with different compositions close to the surface led the rover science team to propose that thin...

The ground where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck last year holds evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis.Stratified soil layers with different compositions close to the surface led the rover science team to propose that thin films of water may have entered the ground from frost or snow. The seepage could have happened during cyclical climate changes during periods when Mars tilted farther on its axis....

GREENBELT, Md., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's mission to investigate the mystery of how Mars lost much of its atmosphere passed a critical milestone on October 4, 2010. NASA has given approval for the development and 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission.(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Clues on the Martian surface, such as features resembling dry riverbeds...

What will the Martian atmosphere be like when the next Mars rover descends through it for landing in August of 2012?An instrument studying the Martian atmosphere from orbit has begun a four-week campaign to characterize daily atmosphere changes, one Mars year before the arrival of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. A Mars year equals 687 Earth days.The planet's thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide is highly repeatable from year to year at the same time of day and seasonal date during...

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Status ReportNASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter resumed observing Mars with its science instruments on Sept. 18, recovering from an unplanned reboot of its computer three days earlier.The reboot put the orbiter into a precautionary standby called "safe mode" on Sept. 15. The event appears to have been similar to one the orbiter last experienced on Aug. 26, 2009. For 10 months prior to this latest reboot, the spacecraft operated normally, making...

BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. will have a significant role on two of the five science instruments that will fly aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a European-built spacecraft slated for launch to Mars in March 2016. The orbiter is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore Mars in future decades. Ball Aerospace will provide the focal plane and electronics for the High Resolution Stereo Color...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into a precautionary standby mode after experiencing a spontaneous computer reboot on Sept. 15. The mission's ground team has begun restoring the spacecraft to full operations.Initial analysis of telemetry from the orbiter indicates the "safe mode" status was triggered by a reboot similar to one experienced Aug. 26, 2009. That was the most recent time that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into safe mode. For 10 months prior to...