Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
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NASA
NASA’s HiRISE Captures Perseverance Marking a Milestone on Mars
Description NASA’s Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day before the robotic explorer marked a distance milestone, having traveled a full marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers) on the Red Planet. Perseverance reached that distance after five years and four months of driving — on the 1,890th Martian day, or…
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NASA
Celebrating NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s 20th Anniversary: Crater Near Sirenum Fossae
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captures a detailed view of a relatively fresh crater in this image released on June 3, 2015. The crater has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta. The steep inner slopes are carved by gullies and include possible recurring slope lineae on the equator-facing slopes. This crater is monitored for changes over time. For 20 years, MRO has sought out…
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NASA
One of NASA’s Key Cameras Orbiting Mars Takes 100,000th Image
Mesas and dunes stand out in the view snapped by HiRISE, one of the imagers aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. After nearly 20 years at the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has snapped its 100,000th image of the surface with its HiRISE camera. Short for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, HiRISE is the instrument the mission relies…
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NASA
NASA Orbiter Shines New Light on Long-Running Martian Mystery
Results from an enhanced radar technique have demonstrated improvement to sub-surface observations of Mars. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revisited and raised new questions about a mysterious feature buried beneath thousands of feet of ice at the Red Planet’s south pole. In a recent study, researchers conclude from data obtained using an innovative radar technique that an area on…
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NASA
NASA’s Mars Spacecraft Capture Images of Comet 3I/ATLAS
Two orbiters and a rover captured images of the interstellar object — from the closest location any of the agency’s spacecraft may get — that could reveal new details. At the start of October, three of NASA’s Mars spacecraft had front row seats to view 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object so far discovered in our solar system. The Mars…
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NASA
NASA Mars Orbiter Learns New Moves After Nearly 20 Years in Space
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is testing a series of large spacecraft rolls that will help it hunt for water. After nearly 20 years of operations, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is on a roll, performing a new maneuver to squeeze even more science out of the busy spacecraft as it circles the Red Planet. Engineers have essentially taught the probe to roll…
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NASA
NASA’s InSight Finds Marsquakes From Meteoroids Go Deeper Than Expected
With help from AI, scientists discovered a fresh crater made by an impact that shook material as deep as the Red Planet’s mantle. Meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper into the planet than previously known. That’s the finding of a pair of new papers comparing marsquake data collected by NASA’s InSight lander with impact craters spotted…
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NASA
Geyser Season on Mars
This Oct. 29, 2018, image from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures geysers of gas and dust that occur in springtime in the South Polar region of Mars. As the Sun rises higher in the sky, the thick coating of carbon dioxide ice that accumulated over the winter begins to warm and then turn to vapor. Sunlight penetrates through…
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NASA
Sols 4193-4194: Stay Overnight? No, Touch-and-Go!
Earth planning date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024 One of the biggest challenges that comes with operating a rover on another planet is that we don’t always know exactly what we’re going to have in front of us when we park after driving. The science teams and our rover planners (who actually plan out the drives) do their best of what…
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NASA
Martian Barchan Dunes
On Jan. 16, 2020, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured this image of two types of sand dunes on Mars: barchan and linear dunes. The small dots are called barchan dunes, and from their shape we can tell that they are upwind. The downwind dunes are long and linear. These two types of dune each show the wind direction in different…
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