[Space] NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

[GioFX]

Da SpaceFlight Now

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cruising normally

NASA/JPL STATUS REPORT
Posted: August 17, 2005

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.


An artist's concept shows Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cruising to Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

"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.

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.

[gpc]

Ma a cosa serve quella specie di rete sopra alla rampa di lancio?

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX

Da SpaceFlight Now

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cruising normally

NASA/JPL STATUS REPORT
Posted: August 17, 2005

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.
[...]

Uè guarda che questa l'avevo postata anche io eh

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Uè guarda che questa l'avevo postata anche io eh

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Ma a cosa serve quella specie di rete sopra alla rampa di lancio?

E' una rete antifulmine costituita da due circuiti separati e 4 torri per la messa a terra... tutte le rampe di lancio devono avere un sistema parafulmine, e per gli Atlas, data la dimensione, si è pensato a questa soluzione con l'introduzione del V, modificando di conseguenza il sito (LC-41, ex ICBM Titan).

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX

E' una rete antifulmine costituita da due circuiti separati e 4 torri per la messa a terra... tutte le rampe di lancio devono avere un sistema parafulmine, e per gli Atlas, data la dimensione, si è pensato a questa soluzione con l'introduzione del V, modificando di conseguenza il sito (LC-41, ex ICBM Titan).

Miiii ma ne sai proprio a pacchi
Grazie

[duchetto]

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is on the Approach
NASA's next martian orbiter has gotten one step closer to the red planet with the transition from cruise phase to approach phase!

"Cruise is a deceptive term - we certainly weren't playing shuffleboard," joked project manager Jim Graf. "It was a very busy time for the team. Many tests were conducted to ensure that the instruments onboard were functioning properly and our navigators performed trajectory correction maneuvers to keep us on a very precise path to Mars."

Speaking of that precision, the third of four possible course corrections was deemed unnecessary this week.

"The navigation solutions have shown a great consistency since the second trajectory correction maneuver was executed on November 18," said Han You, navigation team chief. "More importantly, the current data indicate that the spacecraft aim for insertion into Mars' orbit is well within the projected target. If the current trend continues, the spacecraft will require only a very small nudge to fine tune the final aim."

The next trajectory correction maneuver opportunity is scheduled for February 28, 2006. The orbiter will arrive at the planet on March 10, 2006.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[GioFX]

Da Spaceflight Now:

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter nears arrival at red planet

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: February 17, 2006



NASA's $720 million Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission faces a make-or-break milestone March 10 when it fires its main engines for nearly a half hour, slowing the craft enough to slip into orbit around the red planet.

If the burn doesn't work or is too short, the 4,800-pound solar-powered MRO will race past Mars and on into a useless orbit around the sun. Given the spacecraft's excellent health after a seven-month, 310-million-mile cruise to Mars, mission managers are confident everything will work as advertised.

But they'll still have their fingers crossed.

"We are right on the money right now heading towards our encounter with Mars on the 10th," said James Graf, MRO project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "I have to say, we're getting into the dangerous portion of the mission. The cruise has not been easy, we've accomplished an awful lot during that, but now we're starting to enter into the realm where we've lost two spacecraft in the last 15 years."

Flying over the planet's south pole on March 10, MRO's six 38-pound-thrust main engines will have to fire for about 27 minutes, slowing the craft by some 2,200 mph, to achieve an initial, highly elliptical orbit around Mars.

That first orbit will have a low point of about 250 miles and a high point of nearly 30,000 miles. Over the next seven months, MRO will make 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 less than 200 miles.

Mars orbit insertion 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, and the Mars Observer was lost in 1993 when its propulsion system was pressurized just before arrival.

"We will be approaching the southern pole of Mars and the spacecraft will be pointing directly to Earth at that point in time," Graf said. "We will rotate the spacecraft about 120 degrees to keep the low gain antenna pointed in the manner that we can continue to communicate back to Earth. Then we fire the thrusters.

"If we don't succeed in firing the thrusters, we will fly right by the (planet). So this is obviously the critical maneuver. We have to decrease our speed by 18 percent during that phase."

Twenty-one minutes into the rocket firing, MRO will disappear behind Mars as seen from Earth and remain out of contact for a half hour.

"So we will not see the end of the burn itself," Graf said. "We will be doing all of this automatically on the spacecraft, that is, to terminate the burn. We will slew back to an attitude so that we can view back to Earth the minute we come out from behind Mars."

Flight controllers at JPL will regain radio contact at the point, but it will take another 30 minutes or so to analyze how the spacecraft's velocity is affecting the signal and thus, whether MRO successfully achieved orbit. The goal is a 35-hour orbit with a low point of about 249 miles and a high point of some 27,340 miles.

The spacecraft's cameras will be used to take a few test shots during the initial orbit, but the instruments will be put into hibernation for the remainder of the spring and summer while aerobraking runs its course.

To take full advantage of atmospheric braking, the low point of the orbit will be carefully reduced to around 62 miles. It will be raised, or "walked out," later, with the ultimate goal being a roughly circular orbit with a high point of at most 199 miles and a low point as close as 158 miles to the surface.

Here is a timeline of major events on March 10 (in Earth-received Eastern Time):

10:24 a.m.: Final trajectory correction maneuver if needed

04:07 p.m.: Start spacecraft turn to orbit-insertion orientation

04:19 p.m.: Turn complete

04:24 p.m.: Orbit insertion rocket firing begins

04:45 p.m.: Spacecraft enters martian shadow; on battery power

04:47 p.m.: Loss of signal as MRO passes behnd Mars

04:51 p.m.: End of orbit insertion burn

05:13 p.m.: Spacecraft turns for Earth pointing

05:16 p.m.: Acquisition of signal

Once in its planned orbit next fall, science operations will commence.

"In 1964, Mariner 4 flew by Mars taking a stark set of 24 images showing a surprisingly barren, cold and dry planet," said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead Mars scientist at agency headquarters. "Over 40 years later, we're now poised to collect more data than all the previous missions combined. MRO is set to enter Mars orbit on (March) 10th and is expected to return 34 terabytes of information. This is about as much information as in a video store. I can only imagine the number of exciting things we're going to find on the planet.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began its journey Aug. 12, 2005, with a ground-shaking launch atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket. The spacecraft is the latest in a series of robotic probes designed to explore Mars at ever-increasing levels of detail.

Equipped with a suite of sophisticated cameras and other instruments, MRO will sniff out underground ice deposits, map the red planet's geology with unprecedented clarity and monitor its tenuous, dusty atmosphere.

It also will serve as a communications satellite, relaying measurements and observations from 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 three to four times the combined output of two NASA spacecraft already in orbit around Mars, along with NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter and the old Magellan Venus orbiter.

"Since Mariner 4, we've learned that Mars was once warmer and wetter," Meyer said. "But when, and for how long, remains to be the central question in our understanding of the biological potential of Mars. MRO will be multitasking. It's going to be a weather satellite, it's going to be a surveyor, able to identify geological features, minerals, the subsurface structure, it's going to be a communications relay and a guide to the next decade of exploration. The instrument capabilities are unprecedented.

"So after the hair-raising Mars orbit insertion and several months of aerobraking, MRO will start the science orbit and acquire a tremendous amount of data. We will be well placed in finding exciting new features on Mars, places to go and the wherewithal to unveil the past and potential future of Mars."

[GioFX]

Da SpaceFlightNow.com:

Spacecraft enters orbit around Mars

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: March 10, 2006

After a seven-month voyage from Earth, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully fired its main engines for 27 minutes today, slowing the craft by some 2,200 mph and putting it into a near-perfect elliptical orbit around the Red Planet.

The engines started on time at 4:24 p.m. and were running normally when MRO disappeared behind Mars as viewed from Earth. As expected, the spacecraft remained out of contact for a tense half hour and it wasn't until contact was re-established at 5:16 p.m. that nervous mission managers knew the $720 million mission had survived.

"All stations, we have one way (communications)," an engineer reported when the signal re-appeared.

Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., erupted in cheers, hugs and applause as the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars and back into radio contact with Earth.

"We're there. We're there!" said an engineer, with evident relief.

"Oh, look, it's right on the money," another marveled.

"Right on the money! Look at that! Right on the money!"

It took another few minutes to confirm the craft was actually in orbit and that the main engines had, in fact, fired long enough to prevent a flyby. If the Mars orbit insertion burn had been too short by just a few minutes, the spacecraft would have sailed past Mars and into a useless orbit around the sun. But the solar-powered satellite operated flawlessly throughout the critical maneuver.

"All stations on MRO coord, this is Nav MSA. We have two-way doppler and MRO is in orbit around the planet Mars," the navigation officer reported, touching off another round of applause.

The rocket firing put the craft in an elliptical orbit with a low point of 264.5 miles and a high point of about 28,000 miles. The period of the first orbit was estimated to be 35.5 hours, as opposed to the predicted value of 35.4 hours. The MOI burn was designed to reduce the spacecraft's velocity by 2,237.6 mph. The actual result was within 0.4 mph of the desired amount.

"We noticed during the burn we appeared to be underperforming by about 2 percent," said Howard Eisen, MRO flight systems manager. "But the vehicle was smart enough to take care of itself, it actually burned 33 seconds longer to make up the difference. That's why we came in so exact."

Said Jim Graf, MRO project manager: "It's great to be on the flip side of MOI!"

"Today was picture perfect," he said. "As a matter of fact, I thought today was a simulation because we came so close to being right on. ... It's a great feeling to have another spacecraft orbiting around Mars. It's going to re-write the science textbooks."

Approaching Mars from below, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - MRO for short - pressurized its propulsion system at 3:50 p.m., a critical milestone and the point where NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft failed in 1993. After re-orienting, MRO's flight computer fired up the craft's six 38-pound-thrust main engines main engines at 4:24 p.m. to begin the critical braking maneuver.

"Burn, baby, burn!" an engineer exclaimed when telemetry showed the rocket firing was underway.

About 21 minutes into the rocket firing, MRO disappeared behind the limb of Mars and flight controllers at JPL lost contact with the spacecraft. Thirty minutes later - 25 minutes after the engines were programmed to shut down - MRO emerged from behind Mars.

Using a variety of clever tracking techniques, controllers knew MRO was on the proper course going into today's braking maneuver. And unlike any previous robotic mission, MRO's computer had the ability to reboot itself in the event of a major problem and restart the rocket firing on its own. But nothing went wrong and NASA's latest Mars mission put a major challenge behind it.

Flight controllers will spend the next six to seven months slowly lowering the high point of MRO's orbit by making repeated low-altitude passes through the planet's extreme upper atmosphere. The idea is to use friction with the martian atmosphere to provide the energy necessary to achieve a roughly circular polar orbit.

To guard against overheating the costly spacecraft, flight controllers will proceed very cautiously. Beginning in late March or early April, the low point of the orbit will be slowly reduced to around 62 miles. It will be raised, or "walked out," later, with the ultimate goal being a roughly circular orbit with a high point of at most 199 miles and a low point as close as 158 miles to the surface.

"The first part is there are some practice runs where we just test out the environment, the engines, in this configuration," said project scientist Richard Zurek. "It's like stepping into the pool when you're not sure about the temperature of the water, you put your toe in first and gradually go in. So we go through a series of altitudes to 200 kilometers (124 miles) and then we'll start stepping down from there. It's not until you get to around 160 kilometers (100 miles) of the surface of the planet that you're really going to start feeling the effects of the atmosphere and even then we've got plenty of margin against overheating.

"So you see what that density is and now you've got your first point correlating altitude with what you're seeing. As we get to the lowest altitude, we'll take smaller steps. So step by step, that's what we call the walk in."

During peak aerobraking, Zurek said, the atmospheric forces acting on the spacecraft will be roughly comparable to what one would feel sticking a hand out a car window at a speed of about 40 mph. But it is heat, not the aerodynamic forces, that pose the biggest concern. Engineers do not want MRO to experience anything higher than about 340 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It's kind of a high wire balancing act," Zurek said. "You want to go deep, and in a reasonable amount of time, to get down to the orbit you want and yet you're not going so deep that you're going to overheat some component of the spacecraft."

Once aerobraking is complete, science operations will begin in earnest.

"In 1964, Mariner 4 flew by Mars taking a stark set of 24 images showing a surprisingly barren, cold and dry planet," Michael Meyer, NASA's lead Mars scientist at agency headquarters, said during a recent news conference. "Over 40 years later, we're now poised to collect more data than all the previous missions combined. MRO ... is expected to return 34 terabytes of information. This is about as much information as in a video store. I can only imagine the number of exciting things we're going to find on the planet.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began its journey Aug. 12, 2005, with launch atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket. The spacecraft is the latest in a series of robotic probes designed to explore Mars at ever-increasing levels of detail.

Equipped with a suite of sophisticated cameras and other instruments, MRO will sniff out underground ice deposits, map the red planet's geology with unprecedented clarity and monitor its tenuous, dusty atmosphere.

It also will serve as a communications satellite, relaying measurements and observations from 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 three to four times the combined output of two NASA spacecraft already in orbit around Mars, along with NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter and the old Magellan Venus orbiter.

"Since Mariner 4, we've learned that Mars was once warmer and wetter," Meyer said. "But when, and for how long, remains to be the central question in our understanding of the biological potential of Mars. MRO will be multitasking. It's going to be a weather satellite, it's going to be a surveyor, able to identify geological features, minerals, the subsurface structure, it's going to be a communications relay and a guide to the next decade of exploration. The instrument capabilities are unprecedented.

"So after the hair-raising Mars orbit insertion and several months of aerobraking, MRO will start the science orbit and acquire a tremendous amount of data. We will be well placed in finding exciting new features on Mars, places to go and the wherewithal to unveil the past and potential future of Mars."

[duchetto]

nei forum ho letto che le prime immagini di HiRISE arriveranno il 14 marzo
a quanto pare le immagini avranno una risoluzione impressionante, giusto per avere un idea..

[GioFX]

- MRO Pre-Arrival News Briefing:

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.or...d=142&Itemid=2


- MRO Coverage / Highlights:

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.or...d=145&Itemid=2


- MRO Post-Arrival News Briefing:

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.or...d=146&Itemid=2

[gpc]

Porca vacca, 1.2 gigapixel...
Beh, complimenti. Se non erro le operazioni scientifiche dovrebbero iniziare in novembre...

[Octane]

Ora non ci resta che aspettare il prossimo autunno per cominciare a vedere le immagini nuove marziane..

[duchetto]

An image from MRO's Optical Navigation Camera, which tracks Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos against the star background to determine its position in space, is shown here. The camera has performed as expected, researchers said. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

[Dan Dylan]

Originariamente inviato da gpc

Se non erro le operazioni scientifiche dovrebbero iniziare in novembre...

Il M.R.O. è già nell'orbita della Marte, perchè quelle operazioni cominciano vari mesi dopo?

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da Dan Dylan

Il M.R.O. è già nell'orbita della Marte, perchè quelle operazioni cominciano vari mesi dopo?

Perchè per risparmiare carburante e quindi guadagnare spazio nei sistemi scientifici, utilizzano la tecnica dell'aerobraking per entrare nell'orbita giusta del pianeta. Praticamente, coi motori hanno rallentato e hanno fatto catturare la sonda dalla gravità del pianeta, però ha assunto un'orbita molto allungata. Per farla diventare un'orbita utilizzabile per le operazioni scientifiche, quasi circolare, fanno entrare la sonda negli strati più alti dell'atmosfera marziana in modo che l'attrito la freni (in un'articolo sul sito della nasa c'era scritto che la forza applicata alla sonda sarà praticamente quella che puoi sentire mettendo la mano fuori dal finestrino andando a 40 miglia orarie con la macchina). Questo è un procedimento molto lungo e richiede parecchie orbite prima di portare la sonda alla velocità giusta per un'orbita circolare, ma ti consente di risparmiare molto carburante.

[GioFX]

propellente, si dice propellente gp!

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX

propellente, si dice propellente gp!

Ma quante pippe
Si capiva, era per il vulgus...

[lele980]

mi fa molto piacere che fin ora vada tutto bene! considerate le passate missioni inviate su marte mi meraviglio che ultimemente la percentuale di riuscita è parekkio salita!!

molto interessante la "makkinetta fotografica" da 1.2 gigapixel
a confronto alla mia 7.3 megapixel è un elefante paragonato ad una formika

[duchetto]

First HiRISE Images From Mars Due Thursday

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is scheduled to take its first images of the red planet late Thursday night.

University of Arizona scientists, who manage the HiRISE camera, said the powerful instrument will take four images of Mars between 11:41 p.m. and 11:50 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. The camera also will take a second set of images during another orbit, between 11:15 a.m. and 11:22 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, March 25.

"We could have our data in hand as early as an hour-and-a-half, or two hours after the observations," said HiRISE manager Eric Eliason of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. That would mean camera scientists could receive the data signals as early as 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday and 12:45 p.m. Saturday.

HiRISE images taken during two orbits will be the camera's only photos for the next six months, because the camera will be turned off while the spacecraft continues its aerobraking maneuvers, intended to reshape its highly elliptical orbit around Mars. The process involves dipping repeatedly into the upper atmosphere to reduce speed and drop into successively more circular orbits.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to provide more science data than all previous Mars missions combined, and HiRISE is the most powerful telescope camera ever sent to another planet. NASA scientists have described its resolving power as the equivalent of watching individual tourists cross the Mall in Washington, D.C., from the top of the Empire State Building in New York City.

HiRISE’s first images will be highly experimental, because the team is trying a number of algorithms and systems for the first time, so things could go wrong, said team leader Alfred McEwen. "However, we are sure to learn important lessons about how to operate the spacecraft and HiRISE."

Also, the geometries of the early orbits may be less than ideal for the HiRise camera's test-image swath, and atmospheric dust or ice hazes could obscure the surface because Mars is experiencing early fall in its southern hemisphere.

The camera's first images will be taken at middle latitudes of the southern hemisphere, when the MRO flies between 1,500 miles and 800 miles (2,500 kilometers and 1,300 kilometers) above the planet. After aerobraking, the camera will fly just outside the planet's atmosphere, at an altitude of 190 miles (about 300 kilometers).

Some of the camera's first targets next fall will be of potential landing sites for the Phoenix Mission lander, slated to reach the Martian surface in May 2008. The Phoenix Mission will communicate with Earth using MRO's high-data-rate relay.