Editor| Image: NASA |
NASA has touched another major milestone with its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter celebrating its 10th anniversary on the red planet. NASA’s MRO landed on mars on 10th march, 2006 and has done a great deal of significant work. To celebrate the success over the long journey, NASA has created a video compiled of pictures taken by MRO. You can watch the video here.
MRO has taken very detailed images of the planet’s surface. The observations have helped the organization a great deal in researching more about the planet. MRO has been a part of a number of significant discoveries over these 10 years including determination of the seasonal presence of water on the planet.
Rich Zurek of Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA said, “This mission has helped us appreciate how much Mars — a planet that has changed greatly over time — continues to change today.”
Till date, MRO has circled the red planet 45,000 times and has sent back 264 terabits of data. This is more than all data combined from the other missions. The scientific data gathered by MRO has helped researchers in determining suitable landing spots for the future mars missions. It has also helped in planning proper routes for NASA’s other two Mars rovers – Curiosity and Opportunity. MRO is a vital communication link between the NASA station at Earth and the two rovers. However, Mars Odyssey Orbiter also provides this communication.
The $720 million mission started way back in August, 2005 with focus on studying the geology and climate of the dynamic red planet. Another aim was to trace the evidence of presence of water on its surface.
A NASA official said in a statement, “More recently, water cycled as a gas between polar ice deposits and lower-latitude deposits of ice and snow, generating patterns of layering linked to cyclical changes similar to ice ages on Earth. Dynamic activity on today’s Mars includes fresh craters, avalanches, dust storms, seasonal freezing and thawing of carbon dioxide sheets, and summertime seeps of brine.”
Zurek adds, “The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter remains a powerful asset for studying the Red Planet, with its six instruments all continuing capably a decade after orbit insertion. All this and the valuable infrastructure support that it provides for other Mars missions, present and future, make MRO a keystone of the current Mars Exploration Program.”
Zainab Asif
Damodar Kalyan
