祝贺ＮＡＳＡ
祝贺ＮＡＳＡ！３月１０日“火星勘测”顺利进入环火星轨道。现在，绕火星运行的探测器已达到了３颗。科学无国界，我们为ＮＡＳＡ喝彩吧。 ^^888888888888888
Robotic NASA Craft Begins Orbiting Mars for Most-Detailed Exam03.10.06
With a crucially timed firing of its main engines today, NASA's new mission to Mars successfully put itself into orbit around the red planet.
Image right: Artist's concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit at Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL
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The spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will provide more science data than all previous Mars missions combined.
Signals received from the spacecraft at 2:16 p.m. Pacific Time after it emerged from its first pass behind Mars set off cheers and applause in control rooms at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
"This is a great milestone to have accomplished, but it's just one of many milestones before we can open the champagne," said Colleen Hartman, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "Once we are in the prime science orbit, the spacecraft will perform observations of the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface of Mars in unprecedented detail."
The spacecraft traveled about 500 million kilometers (310 million miles) to reach Mars after its launch from Florida on Aug. 12, 2005. It needed to use its main thrusters as it neared the planet in order to slow itself enough for Mars' gravity to capture it. The thruster firing began while the spacecraft was still in radio contact with Earth, but needed to end during a tense half hour of radio silence while the spacecraft flew behind Mars.
"Our spacecraft has finally become an orbiter," said JPL's Jim Graf, project manager for the mission. "The celebration feels great, 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."
For the next half-year, the mission will use hundreds of carefully calculated dips into Mars' atmosphere in a process called "aerobraking." This will shrink its orbit from the elongated ellipse it is now flying, to a nearly circular two-hour orbit. For the mission's principal science phase, scheduled to begin in November, the desired orbit is a nearly circular loop ranging from 320 kilometers (199 miles) to 255 kilometers (158 miles) in altitude, lower than any previous Mars orbiter. To go directly into such an orbit instead of using aerobraking, the mission would have needed to carry about 70 percent more fuel when it launched.
The instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will examine the planet from this low-altitude orbit. A spectrometer will map water-related minerals in patches as small as a baseball infield. A radar instrument will probe for underground layers of rock and water. One telescopic camera will resolve features as small as a card table. Another will put the highest-resolution images into broader context. A color camera will monitor the entire planet daily for changes in weather. A radiometer will check each layer of the atmosphere for variations in temperature, water vapor and dust.
"The missions currently at Mars have each advanced what we know about the presence and history of water on Mars, and one of the main goals for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is to decipher when water was on the surface and where it is now," said JPL's Dr. Richard Zurek, project scientist for the mission. "Water is essential for life, so that will help focus future studies of whether Mars has ever supported life."
The orbiter can radio data to Earth at up to 10 times the rate of any previous Mars mission. Besides sending home the pictures and other information from its own investigations, it will relay data from surface missions, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Scout scheduled for launch in 2007 and Mars Science Laboratory in development for 2009.
Additional information about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is available online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mro
The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.
Dwayne Brown(202)358-1726
Merrilee Fellows (818)393-0754
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Guy Webster (818)354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
2006-034
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庆贺44444444444444
Optical Navigation Demonstration Near Mars03.10.06
This image showing the position of the Martian moon Deimos against a background of stars is part of a successful technology demonstration completed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter before arrival at Mars.
The spacecraft's Optical Navigation Camera was used in February and March 2006 to demonstrate the use of pictures from a small camera for calculating precise location of a Mars-bound spacecraft by comparing the observed positions of Mars' two moons to their predicted positions relative to background stars. While this technique was not necessary for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's own navigation, the demonstration prepares the way for relying on it for navigating precise arrivals for future missions that land on Mars.
This example image from the Optical Navigation Camera was taken on March 6, 2006, at a distance of 1.08 million kilometers (671,000 miles) from Deimos. That moon, the smaller of Mars' two, has a diameter of 15 kilometers (9 miles), and orbits 23,459 kilometers (14,577 miles) above the planet's surface.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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111111111Re: 祝贺ＮＡＳＡ
祝贺ＮＡＳＡ！３月１０日“火星勘测”顺利进入环火星轨道。现在，绕火星运行的探测器已达到了３颗。科学无国界，我们为ＮＡＳＡ喝彩吧。 ^^当然喽,没有香槟就开一瓶VODKA 顶！~~~ +++++++++++++++++++
For the next half-year, the mission will use hundreds of carefully calculated dips into Mars' atmosphere in a process called "aerobraking." This will shrink its orbit from the elongated ellipse it is now flying, to a nearly circular two-hour orbit. For the mission's principal science phase, scheduled to begin in November, the desired orbit is a nearly circular loop ranging from 320 kilometers (199 miles) to 255 kilometers (158 miles) in altitude, lower than any previous Mars orbiter. To go directly into such an orbit instead of using aerobraking, the mission would have needed to carry about 70 percent more fuel when it launched.
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This is the first time for NASA to use the new technology of “aerobraking” to hopefully get the spacecraft into the right Mars orbiter. Using “aerobraking” saves fuel the spacecraft needs to carry so the spacecraft is able to carry more science instruments to do more scientific research. 祝贺
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