The NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spent 10 years on its mission. Now, researchers are taking a look back at the details that the orbiter has delivered back to Earth about the Red Planet.
It was the MRO that found that there may be liquid water present seasonally on the Red Planet. This finding was largely due to MRO's telescopic camera resolution to find features narrower than a driveway and MRO's ability to track long-term changes on the planet.
Water isn't the only finding that the MRO has made. The spacecraft has identified underground geologic structures by scanning atmospheric layers and observing the entire planet's weather, daily.
The MRO was built to last. All six of its science instruments still remain productive more than seven years after the initial completion of the spacecraft's primary mission.
"This mission has helped us appreciate how much Mars - a planet that has changed greatly over time - continues to change today," MRO Project Scientist Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said.
The data from the MRO has improved scientists' understanding of three distinct periods on Mars. Observations of the oldest surfaces on the planet reveal that during one period of time, Mars hosted a variety of watery environments; some of these, understandably, were more favorable for life than others. More recently, water cycled as a gas between polar ice deposits and lower-latitude deposits of ice and snow, generating patterns of layering linked to cyclical changes similar to ice ages on Earth.
"The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter remains a powerful asset for studying the Red Planet, with its six instruments all continuing capably a decade after obit insertion," said Zurek. "All this and the valuable infrastructure support that it provides for other Mars missions, present and future, make MRO a keystone of the current Mars Exploration Program."
MRO is actually now investigating areas that have been proposed as landing sites for future human missions. This could be huge for NASA's continuing Journey to Mars.
The MRO has provided startling details about the Red Planet. However, its time in space isn't over yet. While its actual mission ended seven years ago, it's still providing scientists with valuable information that can be used for future missions.
