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[cameron]

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mro/one-decade-after-launch-mars-orbiter-still-going-strong

Ten years after launch, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revealed the Red Planet’s diversity and activity, returning more data about Mars every week than all six other missions currently active there. And its work is far from over.

The workhorse orbiter now plays a key role in NASA’s Journey to Mars planning. Images from the orbiter, revealing details as small as a desk, aid the analysis of potential landing sites for the 2016 InSight lander and Mars 2020 rover. Data from the orbiter will also be used as part of NASA’s newly announced process to examine and select candidate sites where humans will first explore the Martian surface in the 2030s.

MRO's primary science mission began in November 2006 and lasted for one Mars year, equivalent to about two Earth years. The orbiter has used six instruments to examine Mars' surface, subsurface and atmosphere. The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars at an altitude of about 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the Red Planet, passing near the north and south poles about 12 times a day.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found evidence of diverse watery environments on early Mars, some more habitable than others," said the mission's project scientist, Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "MRO has discovered that Mars' south polar cap holds enough buried carbon-dioxide ice to double the planet's current atmosphere if it warmed. It’s caught avalanches and dust storms in action. The spacecraft's longevity has made it possible to study seasonal and longer-term changes over four Martian years. These studies document activity such as moving dunes, freshly excavated impact craters -- some which expose subsurface ice -- and mysterious strips that darken and fade with the seasons and are best explained as brine flows."

On July 29, 2015, MRO successfully maneuvered itself into the proper orbit to support the InSight Mars lander mission that will arrive next year.

A planned 77-second firing of six intermediate-size thrusters on July 29 will adjust the orbit timing of the veteran spacecraft so it will be in position to receive radio transmissions from InSight as the newcomer descends through the Martian atmosphere and touches down on Sept. 28, 2016. These six rocket engines, which were used for trajectory corrections during the spacecraft's flight from Earth to Mars, can each produce about 22 newtons, or five pounds, of thrust.

"Without making this orbit change maneuver, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would be unable to hear from InSight during the landing, but this will put us in the right place at the right time," said MRO Project Manager Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The orbiter will record InSight's transmissions for later playback to Earth as a record of each event during the critical minutes of InSight's arrival at Mars, just as MRO did for the landings of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover three years ago, and NASA's Phoenix Mars lander in 2008.

A collection of images from MRO and featured articles are available here and here. Examples (hi-res versions and articles in the link. Some of these are colour enhanced):

For Anniversary of Orbiter's Launch: Seasonal Flows in Mars' Valles Marineris

First test image of Mars taken on March 24, 2006 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE)

Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars

Mars' Moon Deimos

Mars' Moon Phobos

Dust Devils on Mars

Curiosity Rover at 'Pahrump Hills'

Opportunity Rover at 'Victoria Crater'

A Frozen Inactive Spirit Rover in 'Gusev Crater'

Dark Dune Fields of Proctor Crater

Two Generations of Windblown Sediments on Mars

"Patterned ground on Mars is thought to form as the result of cyclic thermal contraction cracking in the permanently frozen ground."

Seasonal Changes on Far-Northern Mars

Badlands of Aram Chaos

 

[timetokill]

Go go NASA. Fuck, I love this stuff. This is the best of humanity at work.

And so much wallpaper fodder. Awww yeah.

 

[WedgeX]

revealing details as small as a desk

Cue people saying that NASA has been holding out on us with the desk pictures.


Really amazing pictures. What a time to be alive.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at in these pictures. I don't understand the orientation or anything. They're confusing.

Edit- ok, not all of them. Few of them though.

 

[Ovid]

Still waiting for the Mars Polar Lander.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

Why is the moon so misshapen?

 

[timetokill]

I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at in these pictures. I don't understand the orientation or anything. They're confusing.

Here's a fun one, then. It's a shot of Curiosity Rover from the Mars Orbiter (expand to see).

 

[timetokill]

Why is the moon so misshapen?

Which one? Mars has two.

Anyway, they're very likely asteroids that were captured by Martian gravity. Actually Phobos is very slowly descending toward the planet. It'll probably be ripped apart by Martial tidal forces in about 100 million years or so.

It's real-life Majora's Mask on an epic scale, people!

 

[VariantX]

Why is the moon so misshapen?

They're really tiny moons probably. Objects need to be a certain size so its own gravity can crush it into a sphere.

 

[FZZ]

Looks like a woman's ass with a fancy tatoo

Wood

 

[AstroNut325]

Major props to NASA and JPL. I believe a good chunk of the MRO team was also on the Curiosity team.

 

[Josh7289]

Wow, Mars has a lot of fascinating geography.

 

[Hidden One]

Looks like a woman's ass with a fancy tatoo

Wood

You have some imagination.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

Holy shit, these pictures:

I would have never thought that was Mars, absolutely stunning. These blew my mind.

 

[DECK'ARD]

You have some imagination.

I thought so too actually.

 

[davepoobond]

Holy shit, these pictures:



I would have never thought that was Mars, absolutely stunning. These blew my mind.

it looks like bacteria or cells. i cant even get a frame of reference for those things to even know what they are

 

[Mohonky]

Mars looks like its. Full of useful metals and minerals.....we should terraform it, it always goes well in the movies.

 

[jerry113]

This picture is my favorite. The square is the Curiosity rover.

We have a robot orbiting another planet taking a picture of another robot on the planet's surface.

Unironically, wholeheartedly speaking - what a time to be alive.

 

[a Master Ninja]

Let's get our asses to Mars already!

 

[Himynameischris]

Damn mars looks amazing, always thought it would be a giant red desert when I was kid. I love this stuff.

 

[Volimar]

Poor Spirit.

 

[Mechazawa]

Can you imagine if Earth was stuck with such 3/10 Moons like that.

 

[RyanardoDaVinci]

Let's get our asses to Mars already!

Gotta wait 20 years.

In which time, idiot members of the government will continually lower NASA's budget, pushing a manned Mars mission back another 20 years.

 

[BizzyBum]

Which one? Mars has two.

Anyway, they're very likely asteroids that were captured by Martian gravity. Actually Phobos is very slowly descending toward the planet. It'll probably be ripped apart by Martial tidal forces in about 100 million years or so.

It's real-life Majora's Mask on an epic scale, people!

=D

 

[Deleted member 80556]

it looks like bacteria or cells. i cant even get a frame of reference for those things to even know what they are

I honestly want the manned missions or at least a rover to go to these places, I want to see them up close, because man, they are freaking beautiful. I'm astounded.

 

[Phoenix]

Its stuff like this that makes me constantly wonder why we don't spend the extra money to just put orbiters around each of the planets instead of these missions that wizz past planets. Yes I understand that the costs are higher, but we would get substantially more return from the investment by having a more permanent orbiter above a planet.

 

[cameron]

Here's a fun one, then. It's a shot of Curiosity Rover from the Mars Orbiter (expand to see).

And to give a sense of scale, Curiosity is about the size of a car (2.7m wide, 2.9m long). Here's a panoramic view on the ground from Curiosity around the same time when MRO took that image.

Full pic by MRO of Victoria Crater (750m diameter, 70m deep)

Panorama by Oppurtunity on ground at the edge of that crater

A couple of other pics of the polar regions I thought was interesting.

Shown here is some of the spectacular scenery created by carbon dioxide as it freezes and thaws on Mars. From left to right, sun-warmed blocks of icy debris tumble down the cliffs of the north polar ice cap. Dust devils leave tracks on defrosting dune surfaces in the southern hemisphere. Receding south polar ice erodes the surface into scalloped ridges. During northern spring, sun-facing dunes emerge from a blanket of frost. As sunlight penetrates translucent ice near the south pole, the ice turns to gas that expands and erodes radiating channels. Where there's a break in the ice, the gas bursts forth, lofting surface materials downwind.

Mars's seasonal polar caps are composed primarily of carbon-dioxide frost. This frost sublimates (changes from solid directly to gas) in the spring, boosting the pressure of Mars's thin atmosphere. In the fall, the carbon dioxide condenses, causing the polar caps to reach as far as ~55 degrees latitude by late winter. In the study of seasonal processes we observe the caps as they increase and decrease in size to investigate both large-scale effects on Mars as well as the local details of the sublimation and condensation processes. By learning about current processes on a local level we can learn more about how to interpret the geological record of climate changes on Mars.

 

[shink]

Wow never knew Mars was like this.

 

[adamsappel]

Fascinating stuff. I wish NASA and the military could swap budgets. I don't understand why politicians don't want to fund space exploration. I mean, this is rocket ships! Who doesn't like rocket ships?

 

[Herne]

Science, you cheap whore!

Seriously though, great stuff. It's amazing what we're currently doing, to say nothing of what's to come.

 

[RyanardoDaVinci]

Fascinating stuff. I wish NASA and the military could swap budgets. I don't understand why politicians don't want to fund space exploration. I mean, this is rocket ships! Who doesn't like rocket ships?

There's no terrorists to kill in space.

 

[Melon Husk]

Fascinating stuff. I wish NASA and the military could swap budgets. I don't understand why politicians don't want to fund space exploration. I mean, this is rocket ships! Who doesn't like rocket ships?

It's kind of astonishing to think what people could do if they wanted to. The Apollo program as a whole cost ~$200Bn in today's money. If there was no need for military, that $600Bn per year would be plenty to colonize every rocky planet and moon in the solar system.

Spoiler

Or build space pyramids for Emperor Obama. Whatever the current pres felt like doing.

 

[Angelcurio]

That's the kind of thing i would really like to experience in VR, be it a full 3D recreation of those same images of Mars, or a full 360° view using those high resolution images of Mars surface. Those images are fascinating.