Posted by Davin Flateau on 9 Mar 2006 at 11:46 am.
Filed under Astronomy.
On Friday at 3:25 p.m. CST, the largest satellite ever sent to Mars will fire its propellant for 27 minutes to gently fall into its invisible orbit around the red planet. The truck-sized Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will join the three satellites and two rovers already poking and prodding the planet for its many secrets.
Mars has become the focus of many big time questions in science. It’s not only the next planet we will land humans on, but it also happens to be the only planet we know of that has had large amounts of liquid water on its surface in the past. Did a young Mars, warmer and wetter in its early life, have the right stuff for live to evolve? Is there liquid water hidden beneath the surface even now? If so, could there be some kind of life on Mars right now waiting to be discovered?
The implications of these questions are enormous, and we’re incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to find some of these answers just over the cosmic hill on the fourth rock from the sun.
The quasi-military name of our latest invention to arrive at Mars hints at what The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will do. Its high resolution camera and imaging systems will be able to make out surface features the size of people over the entire globe. Ancient gullies, lake beds, channels will be mapped in high detail, while also giving us the information we need to select future landing sights.
Weather is a big feature on Mars, with its famous planet-wide dust storms, so the MRO’s Mars Color Imager will track the weather over long periods of time, measuring levels of ozone, dust and carbon dioxide.
A spectrometer will read the sunlight bouncing off of the surface, and analyze the light for signs of mineral deposits from ancient lake beds, giving us a map as to where to search for evidence of possible past life.
The spacecraft will also energize Mars with its radar that will reveal any water or ice within a few hundred feet of the surface. If any life could have possibly evolved in the harsh environment of Mars, it has almost certainly has gone underground. Finding where the water is now is crucial to future manned or robotic missions that will dig for the evidence of possible Martian life.
So fire up NASA TV tomorrow for some astronautic action, and share the excitement of the scientists and engineers as they bring MRO “home.” It’s not everyday you get to fly a spacecraft to Mars!
Some links:
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MRO Home
MRO Updates
About Mars
Martian Soil - A Mars Blog
NASA TV
