NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completes 50,000th orbit of Red Planet

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

New Delhi: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) completed its 50,000th orbit of the Red Planet this week on Monday, March 27, 2017.

The orbiter, which is the most data-productive spacecraft yet at Mars, continues to compile the most sharp-eyed global coverage ever accomplished by a camera at the Red Planet.

As per NASA, the Context Camera on board MRO has taken about 90,000 images since the spacecraft began examining Mars from orbit in late 2006. And each one reveals shapes of features down to sizes smaller than a tennis court, in a swath of ground about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) wide.

NASA has released this animation showing, at one frame per month, how these observations have accumulated to cover more than 99 percent of Mars. No other camera ever sent to Mars has photographed so much of the planet in such high resolution.

Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed its 50,000th orbit of the Red Planet this week! Learn more: https://t.co/r2R8XX1D3q pic.twitter.com/72TkMxNvnU

— NASA (@NASA) March 29, 2017

"Reaching 99.1-percent coverage has been tricky because a number of factors, including weather conditions, coordination with other instruments, downlink limitations, and orbital constraints, tend to limit where we can image and when," said Context Camera Team Leader Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego.

In addition to observing nearly the entire planet at least once, the Context Camera has also observed 60.4 percent of the planet more than once. These observations aid science directly and also certify the safety of future landing sites.

Besides, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) - one of MRO's other cameras - can zoom in on the new impact craters found by the Context Camera. For some of these craters, HiRISE and MRO's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars have confirmed the presence of water ice

Recently, the spacecraft aided preparations for NASA's next mission to Mars, the InSight lander, which will launch next year on a mission to study the planet's deep interior.

Since beginning its science operations in November 2006, MRO has been flying near-polar orbits lasting about two hours, at altitudes from 155 to 196 miles (250 to 316 kilometers).