A year and a half after twin robot rovers thrilled space fans with their hijinks on Mars, NASA is heading there again. <\/p>\n
A fourth Mars orbiter is set to blast off Wednesday, carrying some of the most sophisticated science instruments ever sent into space. Circling the Red Planet, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will scan the desolate surface in search of sites to land more robotic explorers in the next decade.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time we start peeling back the onion layer and start looking at Mars from different vantage points,\u201d said project manager James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. <\/font><\/p>\n Like the three current spacecraft flying around Mars \u2013 including a European orbiter \u2013 the latest probe will seek evidence of water and other signs that the planet could have hosted life. The $720 million mission, which launches from Cape Canaveral, Fla., will also serve as a communications link to relay data to Earth.<\/font><\/p>\n Its powerful camera can snap the sharpest pictures yet of the planet\u2019s rust-colored surface, with six times higher resolution than past images. <\/font><\/p>\n NASA took its first close-up pictures of Mars in 1965 when the Mariner 4 spacecraft zipped past the planet and snapped fewer than two dozen photos. <\/font><\/p>\n Since then, numerous probes that have landed, orbited or passed the planet have shot tens of thousands more images. But only about 2 percent of the planet has been viewed at high resolution. <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cThere are many unanswered questions about Mars,\u201d project scientist Richard Zurek said. <\/font><\/p>\n NASA educational resources (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n The two-ton reconnaissance orbiter will be NASA\u2019s last Mars orbiter this decade. Belt-tightening forced the space agency to cancel a $500 million mission planned for 2009.<\/font><\/p>\n However, two more landing attempts are set during the next four years. Scientists hope to use the orbiter\u2019s detailed mapping to scout safe landing sites for the Phoenix Mars and Mars Science Laboratory missions slated for 2007 and 2009, respectively. <\/font><\/p>\n The information gleaned by the spacecraft could also help scientists decide where to send a lander during the next decade to return the first samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth. <\/font><\/p>\n The stationary Phoenix lander will use a long robotic arm to explore the icy plains of the planet\u2019s north pole. Later, the mobile Mars Science Laboratory will analyze rocks and soil in finer detail than the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which have uncovered geologic evidence of past water activity since parachuting to opposite ends of Mars last year. <\/font><\/p>\n The solar-powered rovers are still trekking across the Martian surface, even though scientists had not expected the six-wheeled machines to last more than three months in the hostile Martian environment. <\/font><\/p>\n The reconnaissance orbiter will also try to find two ill-fated spacecraft \u2013 NASA\u2019s Mars Polar Lander and Britain\u2019s Beagle 2 lander \u2013 which lost contact during separate landing attempts. Earlier this year, the company that operates a camera aboard one of the current Mars orbiting spacecraft \u2013 the Global Surveyor \u2013 found what appeared to be the wreckage of Polar Lander based on grainy black-and-white images. <\/font><\/p>\n The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will launch aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket for its two-year mission. It will adjust its flight path until it reaches Mars\u2019 orbit in mid-March next year. Then it will use the friction of the atmosphere to lower itself to about 190 miles above the surface. <\/font><\/p>\n Along with its telescopic camera, the orbiter\u2019s payload includes ground-penetrating radar that can probe up to a third of a mile beneath surface rock and ice for evidence of water. Other instruments can track daily weather changes and identify minerals. <\/font><\/p>\n Today, Mars is cold and dry with large caps of frozen water at its poles. But scientists think the planet was a wetter and possibly warmer place eons ago \u2013 conditions that might be conducive to life. <\/font><\/p>\n After the imaging phase, the orbiter will switch to its other role as a communication relay for Mars lander missions. It will be equipped with a powerful high-gain antenna that can transmit 10 times more data per minute than the current trio of satellites that includes NASA\u2019s Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency\u2019s Mars Express. <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cWe will have a fire hose of data coming back instead of bringing it back through a little garden hose,\u201d Graf said. <\/font><\/p>\n The spacecraft\u2019s primary mission ends in 2010, but scientists say it has enough fuel to last until 2014. <\/font><\/p>\n Past Mars Missions<\/font><\/p>\n A look at NASA\u2019s many Mars missions over the past four decades, listed by launch date: <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 November 1964, Mariner 3: Spacecraft loses contact after takeoff. Mariner 4 launches three weeks later and in July 1965 becomes the world\u2019s first spacecraft to take close-up pictures of Mars, returning 21 photos. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 February 1969, Mariner 6: Spacecraft flies past Mars in July 1969 and returns 75 photos. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 March 1969, Mariner 7: Spacecraft flies past Mars in August 1969 and returns 126 photos. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 May 1971, Mariner 8: Orbiter fails on launch. Mariner 9 orbiter arrives at Mars in November and operates until October 1972. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 August 1975, Viking 1: orbiter arrives at Mars in June 1976 followed by Viking 1 lander the next month. Orbiter operates until 1980; lander lasts until 1982. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 September 1975, Viking 2: Orbiter arrives at Mars in August 1976, and Viking 2 lander touches down the following month. Lander lasts until 1980; orbiter operates until 1987. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 September 1992, Mars Observer: Craft loses communication in August 1993 just before going into orbit around Mars. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 November 1996, Mars Global Surveyor: Orbiter reaches Mars in September 1997. Continues to operate. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 December 1996, Mars Pathfinder: Lander and Sojourner rover land on Mars in July 1997. Last transmission September 1997. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 December 1998, Mars Climate Orbiter: Lost on arrival in September 1999. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 January 1999 Mars Polar Lander: Spacecraft and accompanying Deep Space 2 microprobes lose contact during arrival at south pole of Mars in December 1999. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 March 2001, Mars Odyssey: Spacecraft reaches orbit October 2001. Continues to operate. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 June 2003, Mars rover Spirit: Craft sets down in the Gusev Crater region in January 2004. It has been examining rocks that suggest a wet and violent history in Mars\u2019 early life. Continues to operate. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 July 2003, Mars rover Opportunity: Craft parachutes to Meridiani plains three weeks after Spirit\u2019s touchdown. It has also found geological evidence of past water activity. Continues to operate. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2014 Aug. 10, 2005, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: Craft expected to enter orbit in March 2006.<\/font><\/p>\n News updates and images can be found here: A year and a half after twin robot rovers thrilled space fans with their hijinks on Mars, NASA is heading there again. A fourth Mars orbiter is set to blast off Wednesday, carrying some of the most sophisticated science instruments ever sent into space. Circling the Red Planet, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will scan the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/em>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=276&start=1<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"