It's getting crowded around Mars.
As two more orbiters have been sent up the Red Planet's atmosphere last year, traffic management in Mars has become a priority for NASA.
The American space agency has recently set in place a new traffic monitoring system on Earth's neighboring planet, so that any collision between five orbiters will be avoided, according to NDTV.
Currently, five spacecraft are orbiting the planet for its explorations. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and India's Mars Orbiter Mission recently joined NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which was sent up in 2006, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, which has been on Mars since 2003, and NASA's Mars Odyssey from 2001.
"Previously, collision avoidance was coordinated between the Odyssey and MRO navigation teams," said Robert Shotwell, the chief engineer for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in a press release. "There was less of a possibility of an issue. MAVEN's highly elliptical orbit, crossing the altitudes of other orbits, changes the probability that someone will need to do a collision-avoidance maneuver," he further said.
"We track all the orbiters much more closely now. There's still a low probability of needing a maneuver, but it's something we need to manage," Shotwell revealed.
The enhanced traffic system, NASA makes use of the Deep Space Network dishes being handled by the JPL, according to Space. JPL will alert the handlers of the other orbiters if the spacecraft come too close towards each other's range.
The system also helps NASA keep track of the Mars Global Surveyor, an orbiter sent in 1997, which has since stopped working.
