Most observations from the orbiter will be discontinued for a few weeks while the sun is between Earth and Mars, which will disrupt communications. Other results reveal details of ancient streambeds, atmospheric hazes and motions of water, along with the ever-changing weather on Mars. Recent climate cycles are indicated by radar detection of subsurface icy deposits outside the polar regions, closer to the equator, where near-surface ice is not permanently stable. They may record possible effects of cyclical changes in Mars’ tilt and orbit on global sunlight patterns. The patterns suggest climate change cycles continuing to the present. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found repetitive layering in Mars’ For five months of Phoenix operations on Mars that ended in November, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter shared the vital communications roles of relaying commands to the lander and data from Phoenix back to Earth. Orbiter data prompted the Phoenix team to change the spacecraft’s landing site, and data also are being used to select the landing location for the Mars Science Laboratory, which is scheduled for launch in 2011. One image showed the Mars rover Opportunity poised on the rim of Victoria Crater and another of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander during its descent to the surface. Included in the observations are hundreds of stereo pairs used to make detailed topography maps and classic images to support other Mars missions. "These observations are now at the level of detail necessary to test hypotheses about when and where water has changed Mars and where future missions will be most productive as they search for habitable regions on Mars," said Richard Zurek, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The orbiter also assembled nearly 700 daily global weather maps, dozens of atmospheric temperature profiles, and hundreds of radar profiles of the subsurface and the interior of the polar caps. This survey has covered almost 60 percent of Mars in mineral mapping bands at stadium-size resolution. It has imaged nearly 40 percent of the planet at a resolution that can reveal house-sized objects in detail, 1 percent in enough detail to see desk-sized features. Since moving into position 186 miles above the Martian surface in October 2006, the orbiter also has conducted 10,000 targeted observation sequences of high-priority areas. The spacecraft also observed that signatures of a variety of watery environments, some acidic, some alkaline, increase the possibility that there are places on Mars that could reveal evidence of past life, if it ever existed. This activity was at least regional and possibly global in extent, though possibly intermittent. It will build on this record as it continues to examine Mars in unprecedented detail during its next two-year phase of science operations.Īmong major findings during the primary science phase is the revelation that the action of water on and near the surface of Mars occurred for hundreds of millions of years. That satellite returned 73 terabits of science data, more than all earlier Mars missions combined. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments. A satellite orbiting Mars completed its primary two-year mission and, after a pause, will be ready for another, NASA announced.
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