[meteorite-list] NASA's New Mars Orbiter Returns Test Images

[Ron Baalke]

March 24, 2006

Erica Hupp 
Headquarters, Washington 
(202) 358-1237

Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(818) 354-6278 

RELEASE: 06-106

NASA'S NEW MARS ORBITER RETURNS TEST IMAGES

The first test images of Mars from NASA's newest spacecraft provide a 
tantalizing preview of what the orbiter will reveal when its main 
science mission begins next fall. 

Three cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were pointed at 
Mars at 11:36 p.m. EST, Thursday, while the spacecraft collected 40 
minutes of engineering test data. The three cameras are the High 
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, Context Camera and Mars Color 
Imager. 

"These high resolution images of Mars are thrilling, and unique given 
the early morning time-of-day. The final orbit of Mars Reconnaissance 
Orbiter will be over Mars in the mid-afternoon, like Mars Global 
Surveyor and Mars Odyssey," said Alfred McEwen, of the University of 
Arizona, Tucson, the 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 Steve Saunders, the mission's 
program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "The information learned will 
be used to prepare for the primary mission next fall." The main 
purpose of these images is to enable the camera team to develop 
calibration and image-processing procedures such as the precise 
corrections needed for color imaging and for high-resolution surface 
measurements from stereo pairs of images. 

To get desired groundspeeds and lighting conditions for the images, 
researchers programmed the cameras to shoot while the spacecraft was 
flying about 1,547 miles or more above Mars, nine times the range 
planned for the primary science mission. Even so, the highest 
resolution of about 8 feet per pixel - an object 8 feet 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 on March 10. Every 35 hours, it 
has swung from about 27,000 miles away from the planet to within 
about 264 miles of Mars' surface. 

Mission operations teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
Pasadena, Calif., and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, 
continue preparing 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 200 miles above 
the ground. 

More than 25 gigabits of imaging data, enough to nearly fill five 
CD-ROMs, were received through NASA's Deep Space Network station at 
Canberra, Australia, and sent to JPL. They were made available to the 
camera teams at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary 
Laboratory and Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif. 

Additional processing has begun for release of other images from the 
test in coming days. Preliminary images from the High Resolution 
Imaging Science Experiment and additional information about the Mars 
Reconnaissance Orbiter are available online at: 

http://www.nasa.gov/mro 

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov 

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, 
manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission 
Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime 
contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.
	
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