NASA Spacecraft Begins Five-Year Mars Mission

Published: Mar 14, 2006
Source: usinfo.state.gov



Washington - With a crucially timed firing of its main engines March 10, NASA's new spacecraft with a five-year mission to Mars put itself into orbit around the red planet.

The spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), will provide more science data than all previous Mars missions combined.

Cheers and applause erupted in the control rooms at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado when scientists received signals from the spacecraft after it emerged from a tense 30 minutes of radio silence during its first pass behind Mars.

"Our spacecraft has finally become an orbiter," said JPL's Jim Graf, MRO project manager, during a briefing at JPL just after the successful orbit insertion.

"The celebration feels great,” he added, “but it will be very brief because before we start our main science phase, we still have six months of challenging work to adjust the orbit to the right size and shape."

The spacecraft traveled about 500 million kilometers to reach Mars after its launch from Florida in August 2005.continue..