Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Earlier this week, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed its 40,000th trip around the Red Planet, and the milestone seemed like a good time to stop and reflect upon the highlights of the spacecraft’s nearly nine years of atmosphere, surface, and subsurface data collection.
The satellite, which has been orbiting Mars since March 2006, is currently in its fourth mission extension following a two-year primary mission. While studying seasonal and long-term changes to the planet, it has transmitted over 247 terabits of data back to Earth – more than the combined total for any other mission that has ever left Earth to study another planets.
One of the MRO’s primary science goals was to use its high-resolution cameras in order to map the Martian landscape to find potential landing sites for future surface-based missions. It provided essential navigational data during the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory and the Phoenix lander, while also serving as a telecommunications relay, using its instruments to study the planet’s climate and geology, and playing a key role in the search for liquid water.
The little orbiter that could
In 2012, the orbiter revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, similar to sand dunes found here on Earth. The finding was unexpected due to the fact that the atmosphere on Mars is much thinner than that found on Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and has less frequent and weaker high-speed winds.
The following year, as MRO surpassed the 200 terabit mark of data transmitted, NASA officials noted that the orbiter had managed to reveal new features of the planet’s atmosphere while also capturing high-resolution 3D images of and providing information about its changing landscape. Its instruments helped identify surface minerals, probe underground layers and track weather.
“The sheer volume is impressive, but of course what’s most important is what we are learning about our neighboring planet,” said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shown that Mars is still an active planet, with changes such as new craters, avalanches and dust storms.”
More recently, the orbiter examined new impact craters caused by the over 200 space rocks that strike the planet’s surface each year, including the largest meteor-impact crater ever documented with before and after images on the Red Planet. It uncovered evidence of ‘marsquakes’ and ancient lakes by mapping the western Candor Chasma canyon within Mars’ Valles Marineris.
It has also been used to locate rovers and other vehicles, both past and present. In 2012, MRO recorded the first color image of Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s landing platform, and last year its cameras captured a photograph of Curiosity from orbit. Then, earlier this year, images taken by the MRO were used to pinpoint the location of the long-lost Beagle2 probe.
Last but certainly not least, the orbiter played a pivotal role in observing and collecting data from comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring’s flyby of the Red Planet in October 2014. MRO. Along with the Mars Odyssey and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiters, it monitored and analyzed the comet as it completed the closest flyby of its kind in recorded history.
Before, during and after the event, all three of the orbiters gathered information about the size, rotation and activity of the comet’s nucleus, as well as the gas composition and variability of the coma surrounding the nucleus and the size and distribution of dust particles in the comet’s tail.
It was able to maintain communications throughout the flyby, and according to MRO project manager Dan Johnson, it “performed flawlessly” as Siding Spring passed within 87,000 miles of Mars. “It maneuvered for the planned observations of the comet and emerged unscathed.”
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