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Planetary News: Mars (2005)

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Update: Spacecraft in Cruise Mode and Performing Well

By A.J.S. Rayl
August 18, 2005

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has fully transitioned from launch mode to cruise mode, and the flight team has completed one of the first tasks in a series of checkout tests and science calibrations that are scheduled during the cruise and approach phases of the seven-month mission to the Red Planet.

"The spacecraft continues to perform extremely well," Dan Johnston, MRO deputy mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced yesterday.

MRO took off in a near-perfect launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida at 7:43 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on August 12, and is currently en route to Mars where it will examine the planet in unprecedented detail from less than 200 miles above its surface, returning several times more data than all previous Mars missions combined.

In addition to the various tests and instrument calibrations, MRO will engage in four trajectory correction maneuvers (TCMs) to fine-tune and adjust its course to Mars, with the first such maneuver now being planned for August 27.

On Monday, the spacecraft successfully carried out a calibration activity for the Mars Color Imager instrument, by slewing about 15 degrees to scan the camera across the positions of the Earth and Moon, then returning to the attitude it will hold for most of the cruise. The resulting data were properly recorded onboard, downlinked to Earth, and received by the Mars Color Imager team at Malin Space Science Systems, in San Diego, California. The image data are currently being processed and analyzed, according to Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems, principal investigator for Mars Color Imager.

The Mars Color Imager, a multiple-waveband camera, is the widest-angle instrument of the four cameras on the orbiter, designed for imaging all of Mars daily from an altitude of about 186 miles/300 kilometers. Imaged at a range of more than 620,000 miles/1 million kilometers away, the crescent Earth and Moon fill only a few pixels and are not resolved in the image. However, this is enough useful information to characterize the instrument's response in its seven color bands, including the two ultraviolet channels that will be used to trace ozone in the Mars atmosphere.

The event this week is the first of two events early in the cruise phase that check instrument calibrations after launching. The second will occur in early September when higher resolution cameras are pointed at Earth and the Moon as the spacecraft continues its flight to Mars.

Part of a long-range vision for exploring the Red Planet, MRO will build on knowledge gained from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission, as well as the three orbiters currently at the Red Planet, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express.

MRO will reach Mars and enter orbit on or about March 10, 2006. It will then spend six months in an aerobraking phase, gradually adjusting the shape of its orbit by using friction from carefully calculated dips into the top of the Martian atmosphere, to put itself into an orbit that is around 186 miles above the surface. At that point, in November 2006, the mission will begin its primary science phase, and the first new data about the planet will be returned in ensuing weeks.

Scientists will use MRO's state-of-the-art instruments to gain a better understanding of the history and current distribution of Mars' water by studying the surface, probing the subsurface, and profiling the atmosphere to improve knowledge about what happened to the water that once existed on Mars.

The MRO mission will also scout for future landing sites and scan the surface for lost landers, including NASA's Mars Polar Lander, which was lost in 1999, and the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 that went missing in December 2003.

Beyond the science, the mission will be conducting telecommunication relay experiments that will enable MRO to transmit about 10 times as much data per minute as any previous Mars spacecraft. That capability will be employed during future missions that land on Mars. Once its two-year science mission is completed, MRO will switch to its role as a communications relay for Phoenix and Mars Science Laboratory. The primary mission is slated to end in 2010, but the spacecraft actually has enough fuel to last until 2015.