NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now been in the Red Planet’s orbit for ten years, something that we celebrate this March 10th. The MRO is a spacecraft that NASA poured $720 million back in the early 2000s, and it was built alongside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After its launch on August 12th, 2005, the space shuttle successfully reached Martian orbit exactly ten years ago. After five months of aerobraking, the MRO entered its final position, joining up with five other active space crafts that had been doing the same since.
The MRO is responsible for a multitude of discoveries that humanity has made about the mysterious Red Planet, the very same that we one day hope to colonize and turn into our smaller home in space. Being equipped with an entire arsenal of scouting, surveying and analysis tools such as cameras, spectrometers, radars and many more, the MRO has transferred fantastic amounts of data back to Earth regarding the geology, weather, climate, stratigraphy and particular features of Mars’ surface.
The MRO mission was originally planned to last just a mere two Earth years, long enough for it to map the landscapes of Mars for potential future landing missions – manned or otherwise. Many such landings were, as a matter of fact, achieved by landers such as the Phoenix, further allowing mankind to explore and study particular areas of the Red Planet. A great amount of interest was shown towards the Martian Arctic where scientists believed they may find water ice.
Its two-year long mission got extended in the end, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter then taking upon the role of communication and navigation system for other probes travelling for the surface and orbit of Mars – whether they are rovers or problems.
However, as its mission began, the MRO took a considerable time to get its first pieces of visual data back to Earth. The first high-resolution image taken by the MRO happened as late as September 29th, 2006. Although the picture was taken from orbit, it showed a shocking amount of detail, being able to resolve items that were as small as 90 cm in diameter. One of such photos that were taken depicts the Candor Chasma region of Valles Marineris on Mars, showing geography that strongly resembles a place where rivers could’ve flown at one point in the very distant past; millions of years to be more exact.
The MRO mission is still, to this day, set to an indefinite duration and most likely, it will remain in commission for a long time to go.
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