Wed, Sep 13, 2006
Craft In Nominal Orbit For Mars Observation
NASA's newest spacecraft at Mars has
completed the challenging half-year task of shaping its orbit to
the nearly circular, low-altitude pattern from which it will
scrutinize the planet.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its six intermediate-size
thrusters for 12.5 minutes Monday afternoon, shifting the low point
of its orbit to stay near the Martian south pole and the high point
to stay near the north pole. The altitude of the orbit ranges from
155 miles to 196 miles above the surface.
"This maneuver puts us into our science orbit," said Dan
Johnston, deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Getting to this point is a great
achievement."
The flight team used a maneuver called "aerobraking," which used
friction between the orbiter and Mars' atmosphere to reduce the
altitude of the orbiter. Aerobraking has many benefits, chief
among them the reduction in fuel needed to change the craft's
velocity. During the procedure, carefully managed by researchers at
JPL, Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, NASA's Langley
Research Center and elsewhere, the craft saw altitudes as low as 61
to 65 miles.
For the first three weeks after its arrival on March 10, the
spacecraft took more than 35 hours for each elongated orbit. After
aerobraking, the vehicle is flying more than 10 orbits a day. "The
pace of work got extremely demanding as we got down to two-hour
orbits," Johnston said. "We had shifts working around the
clock."
Work now begins to prepare the craft for its mission.
This includes deploying a 33ft-long radar antenna, stowed
during aerobraking, and removing a lens cap from an imaging
spectrometer. The two-year investigation, slated to begin in
November, promises to return more data about Mars than all previous
Mars missions combined.
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