[Space] NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

[GioFX]

Benvenuti alla nuova missione verso Marte!

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)



Come si sa ogni 2 anni le orbite della Terra e di Marte di trovano allineate in modo che i due pianeti siano alla minima distanza, tuttavia al contrario che nel 2003 (quando furono lanciati Mars Express e i due rover del progetto MER) e nel 2007, quest'anno la distanza è leggermente superiore così come la dimensione (e il peso) del nuovo satellite della NASA. E' per questo motivo che per la prima volta l'agenzia spaziale americana, che per i lanci delle proprie missioni scientifiche si rivolge a compagnie private, non utilizzerà il collaudato Delta 2 della Boeing ma il recente nuovo lanciatore della famiglia Atlas, l'Altlas V della International Launch Services (ILS), compagnia a partecipazione americana e russa che utilizza i mitici motori RD-180 Energia costruiti in Russia.



La configurazione scelta dalla NASA per MRO è l'Atlas V 401, quella "base", che è costituita quindi da 1 solo motore Centaur, nessun booster, e 4 m di diametro per la sezione di payload.


Missione

Lo scopo principale di MRO è quello di cercare tracce dell'esistenza di acqua per lunghi periodi sulla superficie di marte in passato (quindi MRO cercherà tracce dell'acqua in superficie mentre MARSIS della sonda europea Mars Express sta cercando acqua SOTTO la superfice di marte oggi).

Ma MRO non è solo questo. MRO costituirà infatti il primo ponte della prima rete di telecomunicazioni interplanetaria, grazie alla nuovissima tecnologia che utilizza le frequenze della banda Ka, permettendo una maggiore velocità di trasmissione e ricezione ed un minor consumo.

MRO assieme a Mars Global Surveyor e a Mars Odissey costituirà la prima rete sperimentale di comunicazioni in grado di poter coprire gran parte del pianeta e, assieme a Mars Express, di poter fare da ponte con le future missioni robotiche su Marte verso la Terra.

Il satellite è anche dotato di una nuovissima telecamera ad alta definizione per la navigazione, che se avrà successo verrà utilizzata su futuri satelliti necessari per poter navigare con sicurezza i lander delle missioni spaziali robotiche ed umane.


Satellite

MRO è stato progettato e costruito dalla Loockheed Martin Space Systems ed utilizza un nuovo disegno che la rende più intelligente, affidabile ed agile, ed è la prima sonda progettata appositamente per la fase di aerobraking, cioè quella fase nella quale il satellite utilizza in modo diretto la resistenza dell'atmosfera marziana in modo da rallentare la propria velocità e quindi di abbassare la propria orbita all'altitudine finale.




Configurazioni:


Al lancio


In viaggio


In viaggio vista dalla terra


Inserimento in orbita marziana ed aerobraking


Operatività scientifica


Strumenti

MRO è dotata di 6 strumenti scientifici, 3 strumenti tecnici e 2 sistemi per esperimenti scientifici ottenibili tramite i dati raccolti dagli strumenti di bordo.

Strumenti scientifici:

Camere

- HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment)

- CTX (Context Camera)

- MARCI (Mars Color Imager)


Spettrometro

- CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars)


Radiometro

- MCS (Mars Climate Sounder)


Radar

- SHARAD (Shallow Radar)


Strumenti tecnici:

- Electra UHF Communications and Navigation Package

- Optical Navigation Camera

- Ka-band Telecommunications Experiment Package


Sistemi scientifici:

- Gravity Field Investigation Package

- Atmospheric Structure Investigation Accelerometers


Timeline

- Assemblaggio, testing, lancio: 2002 - Augosto 2005

- Lancio: 10 Agosto 2005 7:54 a.m. EDT (1154 GMT) - Complex 41, KSC, Florida

- Viaggio: Agosto 2005 - Marzo 2006

- Approccio a Marte: Marzo 2006

- Inserimento in orbita marziana: Marzo 2006

- Aerobraking: Marzo 2006 - Novembre 2006

- Operatività scientifica (I° fase): Novembre 2006 - Novembre 2008

- Operatività come ponte radio: Novembre 2008 - Dicembre 2010


Link utili

- Sito ufficiale NASA: NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter


- Sito ufficiale JPL-NASA: NASA Mars Program - JPL - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter


- SpaceFlight Now - Mission Live Update: Spaceflightnow.com

[GioFX]

MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2005

NASA's two-and-a-half ton Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, an instrument-laden spacecraft designed to capture an unprecedented level of detail about the Red Planet and help guide future missions, is awaiting launch Wednesday morning from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Liftoff of the Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket is slated for 7:54 a.m. EDT (1154 GMT) from Complex 41. A continuous window lasting an hour and 45 minutes -- until 9:39 a.m. EDT (1339 GMT) -- will be available for the launch to occur or else the mission must wait until Thursday.

Nearly an hour after liftoff, the rocket's Centaur upper stage dispatches the MRO probe on its seven-month, 310-million mile journey to Mars. A Japanese space agency tracking station acquires the craft's signal a few minutes later as an autonomous sequence of onboard events begin to unfurl the two power-generating solar arrays and deploy the 10-foot primary communications antenna.

MRO should arrive at Mars next March and start five months of aerobraking maneuvers to reach its science-collecting near-polar orbit stretching from 199 miles above the planet's surface at its furthest point to just 158 miles at the closest.

The $720 million mission's main science phase runs from November 2006 to December 2008, enabling the onboard cameras, spectrometer, climate sounder and subsurface radar to gather an unparalleled amount of data about Mars.

"We will keep pursuing a follow-the-water strategy with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter," said Michael Meyer, Mars exploration chief scientist at NASA Headquarters. "Dramatic discoveries by Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and the Mars Exploration Rovers about recent gullies, near-surface permafrost and ancient surface water have given us a new Mars in the past few years. Learning more about what has happened to the water will focus searches for possible Martian life, past or present."

The instruments on MRO will offer sharper focus than earlier spacecraft, giving scientists hope for revolutionary discoveries.

"Higher resolution is a major driver for this mission. Every time we look with increased resolution, Mars has said, 'Here's something you didn't expect. You don't understand me yet.' We're sure to find surprises," said Richard Zurek, the orbiter's project scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Featuring the largest telescope to orbit another planet, MRO's high-resolution camera can spot rocks as small as three-feet across and surface layering that will be critical to Mars research as well as selecting safe but interesting sites for future landers.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the next step in our ambitious exploration of Mars," said Douglas McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program in NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "We expect to use this spacecraft's eyes in the sky in coming years as our primary tools to identify and evaluate the best places for future missions to land."

The launch team has Wednesday and Thursday to get MRO on its way. If the liftoff is delayed beyond that for some reason, the launch would likely wait until after a commercial Boeing Delta 4 rocket gets a couple of attempts to loft the GOES-N weather observatory from Cape Canaveral.

MRO must fly by September 5 in order to reach its destination due to alignment of Earth and Mars.

Final readiness reviews are underway today to ensure all systems are ready for the much-anticipated launch. The Atlas 5 rocket is fully assembled inside the Vertical Integration Facility hangar at Complex 41. It will be rolled to the launch pad atop a mobile platform just before 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday evening. The final hours of the countdown will see the vehicle fueled, tested and placed on internal control for flight.

The weather forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions during the launch window.

"For launch day, the launch complex will have a slight risk for isolated coastal showers during the morning hours," launch weather officer Clay Flinn reported today. "The primary concerns for launch day are thick clouds and cumulus clouds associated with isolated coastal showers.

"Conditions for a 24-hour delay are similar as well."

Watch this page for additional pre-launch coverage and live play-by-play reports during Wednesday morning's countdown.

[gpc]

Ecco, adesso ti diranno su perchè solo il primo post è in italiano

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Ecco, adesso ti diranno su perchè solo il primo post è in italiano

poco ma sicuro... avanti con i troll vai!

gp, siccome sono in fuori per qualche giorno (vacanza ) mi faresti la cortesia di tenere te aggiornati se riesci almeno questo thread?

trovi tutti i link alle discussioni nel topic in rilievo sulla prima pagina, grazie!

Il lancio è previsto per giovedì 11 dalle 14:50 alle 16:35 (in Italia), se hai la possibilità posta per favore le fasi salienti del lancio dal live status di Spaceflightnow.com, grazie...

[GioFX]

TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2005
1615 GMT (12:15 p.m. EDT)

DELAY. Launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been postponed 24 hours due to a technical issue. More details are expected to be released by NASA soon.

The launch window on Thursday extends from 7:50 to 9:35 a.m. EDT (1150-1335 GMT).

The weather forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of acceptable conditions during the window. The minor worries will be thick clouds and cumulus clouds associated with isolated rainshowers in the area.

We'll update this page when more information is known.

[maxsona]

Perchè solo il primo post è in italiano ?

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da maxsona

Perchè solo il primo post è in italiano?

[maxsona]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX

Salvata !!

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX

poco ma sicuro... avanti con i troll vai!

gp, siccome sono in fuori per qualche giorno (vacanza ) mi faresti la cortesia di tenere te aggiornati se riesci almeno questo thread?

trovi tutti i link alle discussioni nel topic in rilievo sulla prima pagina, grazie!

Il lancio è previsto per giovedì 11 dalle 14:50 alle 16:35 (in Italia), se hai la possibilità posta per favore le fasi salienti del lancio dal live status di Spaceflightnow.com, grazie...

Eh lo farei molto volentieri, ma sono in gprs con la flat oscena della tim che mi fa collegare solo tra le 17 e le 9, e la velocità è quella che è, in più ho il limite di traffico e sono via, per cui faccio veramente fatica a seguire le discussioni... se riesco ben volentieri, però non posso assicurare nulla...

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Eh lo farei molto volentieri, ma sono in gprs con la flat oscena della tim che mi fa collegare solo tra le 17 e le 9, e la velocità è quella che è, in più ho il limite di traffico e sono via, per cui faccio veramente fatica a seguire le discussioni... se riesco ben volentieri, però non posso assicurare nulla...

ah vero, dimenticavo...

vabbè, non c'è problema dai!

cercherò di postare qualcosa da qualche internet cafè croato!

[gpc]

Faccio contento quella bella porcellona di GioFX



Guy Webster (818) 354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.



Dolores Beasley (202) 358-1753

NASA Headquarters, Washington



George Diller (321) 867-2468

Kennedy Space Center, Fla.



News Release: 2005-133 August 12, 2005



NASA's Multipurpose Mars Mission Successfully Launched


A seven-month flight to Mars began this morning for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The mission will inspect the red planet in fine detail and assist future landers.

An Atlas V launch vehicle, 19 stories tall with the two-ton spacecraft on top, roared away from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:43 a.m. PDT. Its powerful first stage consumed about 200 tons of fuel and oxygen in just over four minutes, then dropped away to let the upper stage finish the job of putting the spacecraft on a path toward Mars. This was the first launch of an interplanetary mission on an Atlas V.

"We have a healthy spacecraft on its way to Mars and a lot of happy people who made this possible," said James Graf, project manager for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The spacecraft established radio contact with controllers 61 minutes after launch and within four minutes of separation from the upper stage. Initial contact came through an antenna at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan.

Health and status information about the orbiter's subsystems were received through Uchinoura and the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network. By 14 minutes after separation, the craft's solar panels finished unfolding, enabling it to start recharging batteries and operate as a fully functional spacecraft.

The orbiter carries six scientific instruments for examining the surface, atmosphere and subsurface of Mars in unprecedented detail from low orbit. For example, its high-resolution camera will reveal surface features as small as a dishwasher. NASA expects to get several times more data about Mars from the orbiter than from all previous Martian missions combined.

Researchers will use the instruments to learn more about the history and distribution of Mars' water. That information will improve understanding of planetary climate change and will help guide the quest to answer whether Mars ever supported life. The orbiter will also evaluate potential landing sites for future missions. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will use its high-data-rate communications system to relay information between Mars surface missions and Earth.

Mars is 72 million miles from Earth today, but the spacecraft will travel more than four times that distance on its outbound-arc trajectory to intercept the red planet on March 10, 2006. The cruise period will be busy with checkups, calibrations and trajectory adjustments.

On arrival day, the spacecraft will fire its engines and slow itself enough for Martian gravity to capture it into a very elongated orbit. The spacecraft will spend half a year gradually shrinking and shaping its orbit by "aerobraking," a technique using the friction of carefully calculated dips into the upper atmosphere to slow the vehicle. The mission's main science phase is scheduled to begin in November 2006.

The launch was originally scheduled for August 10, but was delayed first due to a gyroscope issue on a different Atlas V, and the next day because of a software glitch.

The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, prime contractor for the project, built both the spacecraft and the launch vehicle.

NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center is responsible for government engineering oversight of the Atlas V, spacecraft/launch vehicle integration and launch day countdown management.

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro .



For information about NASA and other agency programs on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html .




- end -

[gpc]

Guy Webster (818) 354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.



Dolores Beasley (202) 358-1753

NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.



News Release: 2005-135 August 17, 2005



Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Status

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched on Aug. 12, has completed one of the first tasks of its seven-month cruise to Mars, a calibration activity for the spacecraft's Mars Color Imager instrument.

"We have transitioned from launch mode to cruise mode, and the spacecraft continues to perform extremely well," said Dan Johnston, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The first and largest of four trajectory correction maneuvers scheduled before the orbiter reaches Mars is planned for Aug. 27.

For the calibration task on Aug. 15, the spacecraft slewed about 15 degrees to scan the camera across the positions of the Earth and Moon, then returned to the attitude it will hold for most of the cruise. Data were properly recorded onboard, downlinked to Earth and received by the Mars Color Imager team at Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, principal investigator for Mars Color Imager, said the image data are being processed and analyzed.



This multiple-waveband camera is the widest-angle instrument of four cameras on the orbiter, designed for imaging all of Mars daily from an altitude of about 300 kilometers (186 miles). Imaged at a range of more than 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles) 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 two ultraviolet channels that will be used to trace ozone in the Mars atmosphere. This 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.



The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will reach Mars and enter orbit on about March 10, 2006. After gradually adjusting the shape of its orbit for half a year, it will begin its primary science phase in November 2006. The mission will examine Mars in unprecedented detail from low orbit, returning several times more data than all previous Mars missions combined. Scientists will use its instruments to gain a better understanding of the history and current distribution of Mars' water. By inspecting possible landing sites and by providing a high-data-rate relay, it will also support future missions that land on Mars.



More information about the mission is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mro .



The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, prime contractor for the project, built both the spacecraft and the launch vehicle.



-end-

[Fradetti]

perchè il primo post non è in inglese?????

[razziadacqua]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Ecco, adesso ti diranno su perchè solo il primo post è in italiano

ma scusatemi ragazzi cosa c'è di male nella nostra madre linguA?PIUTTOSTO IO MI CHIEDO dove abbia trovato una pagina così ben informata in italiano...magari fosse sempre così...

siete tutti inglesofili?

[razziadacqua]

Piuttosto non ho capito quella storia della Ka-Band...perchè sia più veloce e in che senso...
da quel che ho capito trasmette a 32gigaHz invece che 8gigaHz come la X-band?
Qualcuno chiarisca

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da razziadacqua

ma scusatemi ragazzi cosa c'è di male nella nostra madre linguA?PIUTTOSTO IO MI CHIEDO dove abbia trovato una pagina così ben informata in italiano...magari fosse sempre così...

siete tutti inglesofili?

Mah, non è questione di inglesofilia, è che su questi argomenti il 99% della documentazione attendibile è lingua inglese e gli aggiornamenti delle missioni sono in lingua inglese dato che sono missioni o americane o europee, per cui la lingua internazionale è l'inglese...
Nell'italiano non c'è niente che non vada, anzi, il problema è che lo parliamo solo noi.

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da razziadacqua

ma scusatemi ragazzi cosa c'è di male nella nostra madre linguA?

Ti sfugge che non si trovi un bel NULLA di attendibile e scritto bene in italiano che sia aggiornato costantemente?

PIUTTOSTO IO MI CHIEDO dove abbia trovato una pagina così ben informata in italiano...magari fosse sempre così...

Dunque, se non erro lo scritta IO sulla base delle notizie e conoscenze che ho della missione e delle informazioni trovate sul sito ufficiale della missione.

[GioFX]

Photo gallery: Atlas 5 rocket rolled to the launch pad

Riding atop a mobile launching platform, the Atlas 5 rocket is rolled from its assembly building to the pad at Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 Wednesday night as the countdown began for the first attempt to launch NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Although the attempt was later scrubbed, the rocket remained on the pad during the 24-hour postponement. Photos: Adam Mattivi/Lockheed Martin

[GioFX]

Sharp-eyed orbiter dispatched to Mars

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: August 12, 2005

A Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket boosted NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into space today, kicking off a $720 million mission to sniff out underground ice deposits, to map the red planet's geology with unprecedented clarity and to monitor its tenuous, dusty atmosphere in an ongoing scientific assault.

The 4,800-pound solar-powered satellite, equipped with a 10-foot-wide antenna to beam a torrent of data back to Earth, also will serve as a communications satellite, relaying measurements and observations from current and future Mars landers while using its own ultra-high-resolution camera and other instruments to identify possible landing sites.

With six sophisticated instruments, including a giant 1.2-gigapixel camera capable of photographing objects as small as a kitchen table, the Mars Climate Orbiter is expected to beam back some 34 terabits of data over the life of the mission. That's three to four times the combined output of two spacecraft already in orbit around Mars, along with NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter and the Magellan Venus orbiter.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a weather satellite, a geological explorer, a communications satellite and an exploration pathfinder hunting for landing sites of the future for both robotic and human," said Doug McCuistion, Mars exploration program director at NASA headquarters.

"It lays the groundwork for the landing of the Phoenix mission in 2008 and the Mars Science Laboratory (nuclear-powered rover) in 2010. It will provide data relay for both of those spacecraft as well as the rovers (now on Mars) and future missions."

The MRO mission got underway with a ground-shaking roar at 7:43 a.m. today as the Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and vaulted away from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A launch attempt Thursday was called off because of problems with the Centaur second stage's liquid hydrogen fueling system.

It turned out to be a software glitch caused by a nearby lightning strike during a thunderstorm earlier in the day. There were no significant problems today and 58 minutes after climbing away through a clear blue sky, MRO was gently released from the rocket's spent upper stage. Within 20 minutes, its two solar arrays and its main dish antenna unfolded and locked in place as planned.

"It's been a long road, it's been five long years to get here and we're up, we're on our way to Mars," said project manager James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We have a spacecraft that is performing nominarlly. ... To an engineer, that means absolutely perfectly. It's going great."

It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach its target, covering some 310 million miles in a long arc that will put MRO just in front of Mars next March. Flying over the planet's south pole, MRO's six main engines will have to fire for about 25 minutes, slowing the craft by some 2,200 mph. That will be just barely enough for Mars' gravity to capture the craft in a long elliptical orbit.

That first orbit will have a low point of about 186 miles and a high point of nearly 30,000 miles. Over the next six months, MRO's thrusters will fire at the high point of each orbit, setting up repeated low-altitude passes through the planet's extreme upper atmosphere. This aerobraking process will provide the atmospheric friction needed to slowly bleed off energy and circularize the orbit at an altitude of roughly 200 miles.

It is a critical maneuver with little margin for error. NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was lost during orbit insertion in 1999, victim of an embarrassing navigation error. Richard Zurek was the project scientist then and now.

"You don't want to be a flyby, you want to go into orbit," he said. "We've lost a spacecraft before at this point. So getting into orbit and then going through aerobraking (is difficult). We've got more margin with this spacecraft than with others. The big (solar) arrays give us more area and we've a little more flexible about balancing drag versus heating of the spacecraft."

After fine tuning the final orbit and calibrating MRO's instruments, two years of full-time science observations will begin in November 2006.

"It's going to take us another 16 months before we're really ready to open for business and then that firehose will be ready to start flowing," said Zurek.

The "firehose" is the expected 5.6-megabits-per-second flow of data from MRO's instruments through big dish antenna. "If you want to start an intensive investigation of the planet itself, you have to start increasing your ability to cover vast portions of the surface, you need to increase that coverage and you need to do it at a much higher resolution," said Graf.

"When you couple those two things together, that translates into more and more data. So what we have done is taken a major step forward in the capability of this spacecraft to return data."

The Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars send back data at a few thousand bits per second. With MRO, "we can get upwards of 34 terabtis of data being brought back in our two years of science operations. ... We are going to be awash in data, which will enable us to better understand the planet as a whole."

One instrument that will consume a large part of MRO's bandwidth is the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, a 145-pound camera built by Ball Aerospace and managed by Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona.

The HiRSE camera is built around a 20-inch primary mirror and 14 CCD detectors. It is the largest camera ever built for operation beyond Earth's orbit.

Taking photographs across 3.5-mile-wide swaths of martian terrain, the HiRSE camera should be able to resolve surface features as small as 40 inches across. McEwen's team plans to process 1,000 full-resolution images and another 9,000 lower-resolution pictures during the primary science phase of the mission.

"It's basically a big digital camera," McEwen said. "Only this one has a primary mirror that's half a meter in diameter and that will be the largest camera to ever leave Earth orbit, the largest telescope. It's also a gigapixel camera, or a 1,200 megapixel camera.

That translates into full-resolution images measuring up to 20,000 pixels wide and 60,000 pixels long.

"To see all of a HiRSE image at full resolution, you would need 1,200 of your typical computer monitors stacked up," McEwen said.

MRO's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer will search for the spectral fingerprints of surface minerals that might have formed in the presence of water while another camera will snap images across broad 18.6-mile-wide swaths to provide context, showing features as small as a tennis court. The Mars Color Imager will provide global views of the entire planet and its changing atmosphere and the Mars Climate Sounder will monitor atmospheric water vapor, dust and ice.

MRO is not content to focus on the visible parts of the red planet. The Shallow Subsurface Radar will penetrate up to a mile beneath the surface in search of buried ice deposits.

"We want to see the details of both the surface composition, it's structure, while we're also monitoring the atmosphere, learning more about the present climate," Zurek said.

"We also want to look and follow up on a discovery the Odyssey spacecraft made that there is ice present in much of the upper yard or so of Mars's surface. Now it's not everywhere, but it is extensive and we want to know whether or not that layer of ice is just a thin layer that's in equilibrium with today's atmosphere or whether it represents just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, a cryosphere that extends much deeper.

"The Italian Space Agency has provided to NASA a radar that will look at the near subsurface, complimenting the radar that's being flown today on the (European Space Agency's) Mars Express," Zurek said. "We're looking for things near the surface deeper than a yard, up to a mile below the surface, depending on what the materials are like."

Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, said MRO will make major contributions in a variety of disciplines and help answer "whether or not life ever started on that planet and if not, why not?"

"And then last but not least, (MRO will study) what kind of resources may be available and also, perhaps, what hazards might be there on Mars for future explorers. So within this, the MRO plays a very grand step in our exploration."

[GioFX]

Atlas 5 launches Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The first interplanetary Atlas 5 rocket launches August 12 at 7:43 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 to propel NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on its seven-month voyage to the Red Planet.