Mars-Bound NASA Craft Tweaks Course, Passes Halfway Point

Published: Nov 19, 2005
Source: newswire.ascribe.org



PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully fired six engines for about 20 seconds today to adjust its flight path in advance of its March 10, 2006, arrival at the red planet.

Since its Aug. 12 launch, the multipurpose spacecraft has covered about 60 percent of the distance for its trip from Earth to Mars. It will fly about 40 million kilometers (25 million miles) farther before it enters orbit around Mars. It will spend half a year gradually adjusting the shape of its orbit, then begin its science phase. During that phase, it will return more data about Mars than all previous missions combined. The spacecraft has already set a record transmission rate for an interplanetary mission, successfully returning data at 6 megabits per second, fast enough to fill a CD-ROM every 16 minutes.

"Today's maneuver mainly increases the speed to bring us to the target point at just the right moment," said Tung-hanYou, chief of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The intended nudge in velocity is 75 centimeters per second (less than 2 miles per hour). The spacecraft's speed relative to the sun is about 27 kilometers per second (61,000 miles per hour).continue..