USER MANUAL
MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER (MRO)
The MRO was launched in response to NASA’s plans to study Mars more thoroughly
THE SPECS
Launch: 12 August 2005 Launch rocket: Atlas V 401
Target: Mars
Operators: NASA and JPL
Orbital inclination: 93 degrees
Component: Multiple components
Arrival at Mars: 10 March 2006
Mission ends: TBC
Time spent in orbit: 16 years
From the fascination it has provided the field of astronomy with for centuries, to the secrets it has yielded since the first Mars mission in 1960, the Red Planet remains an elusive and esoteric point in the night sky.
Since the early 1960s, the collective space agencies of the world have launched over 50 missions to the distant world the Romans named after their deity of war. One of those missions – NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) – has just completed its tenth year of groundbreaking study above Mars. Through the lens of its colossal HiRISE camera, we have been able to study the Red Planet like never before and it has radically changed our understanding of this awe-inspiring destination.
Much like many spacecraft before it (and no doubt, those to come after it), the MRO was born out of NASA’s ever-evolving mission to study Mars in greater depth. After more than a decade of successful launches, NASA’s longstanding Mars Exploration Program (MEP) decided it needed a powerful camera, designed specifically to study Mars’s unusual topography and composition.