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Tag: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Functional Following Computer Swap

    Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Functional Following Computer Swap

    NASA today confirmed that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is still functional following a reboot into safe mode on March 9. According to the agency the orbiter rebooted itself after an unscheduled swap of its main computer to a backup. In addition, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also swapped to a backup radio transponder during the event, which researchers are now using to communicate with the satellite.

    The orbiter team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is currently restoring the spacecraft to full operational status, but have not yet determined the cause of the computer swap. This marks the fifth time the orbiter has booted into safe mode following an unplanned computer swap. The cause of the previous swaps has also not been determined.

    “The spacecraft is healthy, in communication and fully powered,” said Dan Johnston, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager at JPL. “We have stepped up the communication data rate, and we plan to have the spacecraft back to full operations within a few days.”

    The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been gathering data from its orbit around Mars for almost exactly eight years, including observations of snow and dust storms on the Martian surface. In addition to its science operations the satellite is used to relay data from NASA’s two functioning Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. The orbiter’s operations have been temporarily suspended following the computer swap and the rovers are currently using NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter to communicate with Earth.

    Image via NASA/JPL

  • Mars Lake May Once Have Filled Martian Crater

    While Mars Rover Curiosity is busy drilling rocks, NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has provided new evidence of a possibly wet underground environment on Mars.

    The new evidence comes from Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) data of a location known as McLaughlin Crater. The crater, which is 92 kilometers (57 miles) in diameter and 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) deep, appears to have once held a lake that was fed by groundwater. Researchers looking at the data point to layered, flat rocks at the botom of the crater conaining carbonate and clay minerals as evidence of the ancient lake. However, the lack of large inflow channels mean the source of the lake must have come from below.

    “Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside,” said Joseph Michalski, lead author of a paper on the findings published this week in the journal Nture Geoscience. “A number of studies using CRISM data have shown rocks exhumed from the subsurface by meteor impact were altered early in Martian history, most likely by hydrothermal fluids. These fluids trapped in the subsurface could have periodically breached the surface in deep basins such as McLaughlin Crater, possibly carrying clues to subsurface habitability.”

    On Earth, groundwater-fed lakes usually occur at low elevations. McLaughlin Crater sits at the low end of a regional slope several kilometers long, meaning it fits the profile for such a process.

    “The MRO team has made a concerted effort to get highly processed data products out to members of the science community like Dr. Michalski for analysis,” said Scott Murchie, CRISM Principal Investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “New results like this show why that effort is so important.”