NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Celebrates Its Tenth Birthday on the Red Planet

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is celebrating its tenth birthday today. A total of 10 years after launch, the MRO is continuing to reveal new insights into the Red Planet's diversity and activity.

The MRO now plays a key role in NASA's Journey to Mars planning. Images from the orbiter, which reveal details as small as a desk, aid the analysis of potential landing sites for the 2016 InSight lander and Mars 2020 rover. Data from the orbiter will also be used as part of NASA's newly announced process to examine and select sites where humans will explore the Martian surface in the 2030s.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found evidence of diverse watery environments on early Mars, some more habitable than others," said Rich Zurek, the mission's project scientist, in a news release. "MRO has discovered that Mars' south polar cap holds enough buried carbon-dioxide ice to double the planet's current atmosphere if it warmed. It's caught avalanches and dust storms in action. The spacecraft's longevity has made it possible to study seasonal and longer-term changes over four Martian years. These studies document activity such as moving dunes, freshly excavated impact craters-some of which expose subsurface ice-and mysterious strips that darken and fade with the season and are best explained as brine flows."

Ten years after launch, NASA's MRO continues full science and relay operations. It's with the help of this orbiter that NASA will be able to plan for a mission to Mars in the future.

For more information about the MRO, check out NASA's website.

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