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NASA's New Mars Orbiter Returns Test Images

Three cameras help engineers prepare for orbiter science mission

The first test images of Mars from NASA's newest spacecraft preview what the orbiter will reveal when its main science mission begins in six months.

Three cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were pointed at Mars March 23, while the spacecraft collected 40 minutes of engineering test data, according to a NASA press release.

"These high resolution images of Mars are thrilling, and unique given the early morning time of day," said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera.

"These images provide the first opportunity to test camera settings and the spacecraft's ability to point the camera with Mars filling the instruments' field of view," said mission program scientist Steve Saunders.

The information learned will be used to prepare for the primary mission, six months from now, Saunders said.

The images' main purpose is to help the camera team develop calibration and image-processing procedures, such as precise corrections needed for color imaging and high-resolution surface measurements from stereo pairs of images.

To get desired ground speeds and lighting conditions for the images, researchers programmed the cameras to shoot while the spacecraft was flying 2,490 kilometers or more above Mars, nine times the range planned for the primary science mission.

Even so, the highest resolution of about 2.4 meters per pixel - an object 2.4 meters in diameter would appear as a dot - is comparable to some of the best resolution previously achieved from Mars orbit.

Further processing of the images during the next week or two is expected to combine narrow swaths into broader views and show color in some portions.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been flying in elongated orbits around Mars since it entered orbit March 10.

Every 35 hours, it has swung from about 43,452 kilometers away from the planet to within about 425 kilometers of Mars' surface.

Mission operations teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado continue to prepare for aerobraking.

That process will use about 550 careful dips into the atmosphere during the next seven months to shrink the orbit to a near-circular shape less than 322 kilometers above the ground.

NASA's Deep Space Network station at Canberra, Australia, received more than 25 gigabits of imaging data, enough nearly to fill five CD-ROMs, and sent it on to JPL.

The data were made available to the camera teams at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Malin Space Science Systems in California.

More processing has begun for release of other images from the test in coming days.

Images and information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are available at the NASA Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State