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Space Topics

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter


Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is the latest mission to Mars and is following NASA's strategy of looking for water. Designed to examine the Red Planet in unprecedented detail from low orbit and provide more data about the intriguing planet than all previous missions combined, it launched on an Atlas V-401 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 12, 2005.

MRO entered the primary science phase of its mission on November 8, 2006, and is now returning data to Earth. Image processing is underway, with new images being released daily.

While other Mars missions, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, have shown that water once flowed across the surface, MRO is on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface long enough to provide a habitat for life. With its suite of six instruments, MRO will zoom in for extreme close-up photography of the surface, analyze minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how much dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, monitor daily global weather, and characterize future potential landing sites. It can transmit about 10 times as much data per minute as any previous Mars spacecraft, serving both to convey detailed observations of the Martian surface, subsurface, and atmosphere by the instruments on the orbiter, and enable data relay from other landers on the Martian surface to Earth.

Science Instruments

Mars Climate Sounder

The Planetary Society is an education outreach partner on Mars Climate Sounder, and is proud to be a part of this next phase of Mars exploration.

MCS will be the first science investigation at Mars that is capable of performing a "4-dimensional" study of the Martian climate.

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MRO will also scan the surface for lost landers, including NASA's Mars Polar Lander and the European Space Agency's Beagle 2, and is testing an experimental navigation camera that may be used on future missions to guide incoming landers to precise landings. Once its primary mission has ended, it will support future landed missions by acting as a high-data-rate communications relay.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Facts
Launch date: August 12, 2005
Mars orbit insertion: March 10, 2006
Science operations: November 2006 - November 2008
Communications relay: November 2008 - December 2010