10 years ago, NASA launched its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) with the objective of observing the Red Planet from above.
10 years later, MRO has made various discoveries about Mars' atmosphere, aided exploratory rovers on the ground, and helped plot coordinates for the next lander. While Aug. 12 marked the 10-year anniversary of MRO's launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, the satellite has another milestone coming up in a few months.
"The most crucial event after launch was orbit insertion on March 10, 2006," Dan Johnston, an MRO project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a press release. "The 27-minute burn of the spacecraft's main engines, necessary for orbit capture, was scheduled for completion while the spacecraft was behind Mars, so we had to wait in suspense for confirmation that it went well. It did. As planned, the initial orbit was highly elliptical. Then we had nearly five months of aerobraking - using controlled friction of more than 400 dips into the upper fringe of the atmosphere - to shrink the orbit to a nearly circular shape."
After aiding the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers currently trekking the Martian surface, MRO has found a place for NASA to put the InSight lander when it launches next year. Additionally, MRO performed a maneuver to optimize its position to provide communication support for InSight.
"Ten years after launch, MRO continues full science and relay operations," Kevin Gilliland, spacecraft engineer for the mission at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said in the release. "We've kept our operations efficient. We've been able to bring back an astonishing amount of science data - more than 250 terabits so far. Even after more than 40,000 orbits, the mission remains exciting, with new challenges such as taking close-up images of a passing comet last year and supporting next year's InSight landing."
