MRO Successfully Enters Mars’s Orbit

March 10, 2006: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has successfully entered Mars’s orbit.

Below are the events it has completed:

Eastern Time
4:07 p.m.: Turn to burn attitude
4:24 p.m.: Orbit insertion burn begins
4:46 p.m.: Behind Mars / expected loss of signal
4:51 p.m.: Expected end of orbit insertion
5:16 p.m.: Emerges from behind Mars
5:16 p.m.: Re-acquisition of signal
5:30 p.m.: Health and status report

About MRO
It has traveled 500 million km to reach Mars since it is launched from Florida on August 12, 2005. It needed to use its main thrusters as it neared the planet in order to slow itself enough for Mars’ gravity to capture it. The thruster firing began while the spacecraft was still in radio contact with Earth, but needed to end during a tense half hour of radio silence while the spacecraft flew behind Mars. Scientists are now having 6 months to adjust the orbit to the right size and shape.

After it goes into the prime orbit, it will start observing the atmosphere, surface and subsurface of Mars in incrediblely high details!

The instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will examine the planet from this low-altitude orbit. A spectrometer will map water-related minerals in patches as small as a baseball infield. A radar instrument will probe for underground layers of rock and water. One telescopic camera will resolve features as small as a card table. Another will put the highest-resolution images into broader context. A color camera will monitor the entire planet daily for changes in weather. A radiometer will check each layer of the atmosphere for variations in temperature, water vapor and dust.

Thanks to MRO, we’ll know more about Mars soon!