The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was launched in August 2005 for the planet Mars which it will reach a few months later, in March 2006. After several weeks of slowing down maneuvers, it will position itself in orbit bass and since then scans his target using his six main instruments.
A talkative and durable probe
Initially scheduled for completion in 2008, the mission of the MRO has been extended several times in view of the good resistance of the equipment and its contribution scientist. Now, NASA hopes to keep the probe running through the mid-2020s and as clean as possible. His contributions to the knowledge ofhistory Martian geology are multiple and unique. It also helped to understand that Mars was a still active planet with seasons, a seismic activity and an circulation varied and intense atmosphere despite the delicacy of this envelope. The MRO sent an impressive flood of data to Earth: hundreds of terabits of images, measurements and telemetry data. No Martian probe has proven to be so “talkative”.
Its durability has made it possible to explore the long phenomena that take place on the surface of Mars: the succession of seasons, the freezing and thawing of dry ice or even the formation of gullies under the effect of this ice. She even managed to spot a new asteroid impact crater who appeared during his mission.
Unforgettable images
But the MRO has earned its letters of nobility thanks to the beautiful and highly detailed images of the surface of Mars that it regularly produces. The craft imaged almost the entire Martian surface in low-resolution visible and infrared light and the HiRISE high-resolution camera (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has covered more than 3% of the surface of Mars. The instrument is equipped with a 50 cm telescope which takes images in three color bands: infrared, red and bleu/vert. It can distinguish details of 30 cm on the ground and take stereo images to reconstruct the relief of a terrain. MRO even turned around to point HiRISE at Earth and Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars. By early August, the powerful camera alone had taken 6,882,204 images, generating 194 terabytes of data since 2006.
In addition to soil studies, the probe is used by the engineers in charge of the rovers (there is currently only one left: Curiosity) which travel on Mars to select the most favorable routes. His contribution was also decisive in the selection of the Jezero crater, the site landing site of the new NASA rover, Perseverance, which took off this summer and will arrive on Mars in February 2021. Finally, together with the Mars Odyssey probe which has moved for the occasion, MRO will serve as a relay for the rover by transmitting its data to the Earth via the antennas of the network Deep Space Network.
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