The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is performing the final series of maneuvers needed to enter orbit around Mars. I am listening to the progress via NASA TV, and I’ll post updates in this entry as I hear them.
(Times are Pacific)
- 2:42 p.m.: With MRO safely circling (well, ellipticalling) Mars, I’ll sign off for now. My congrats to all the engineers and scientists at NASA and its contractors who made this tremendous achievement possible!
- 2:25 p.m.: MRO is in orbit around Mars!
- 2:18 p.m.: YEEHAW! It looks like the burn was perfect! Many people are saying "It’s right on the money"!
- 2:17 p.m.: Well, that was fast. They have reacquired the signal!
- 2:16 p.m.: MRO now has a clear line of sight to Earth, but it may take a few minutes to reacquire the signal. The Doppler should tell engineers if the spacecraft slowed by the right amount.
- 2:03 p.m.: Still behind the planet, MRO is slewing once again to point its instruments at Earth, so that when it pops back out from behind Mars it can talk to us.
- 1:52 p.m.: The burn should now be complete. We won’t know until the signal is regained at 2:16.
- 1:46 p.m. LOS! Loss of signal, that is. Now we wait, and bite our nails.
- 1:45 p.m.: MRO has lost 1400 mph, about 1/2 the total needed.
- 1:38 p.m.: The burn continues. At 1:46, MRO will go behind the planet as seen from Earth, and we’ll lose contact with it. The burn will end at 1:51, while MRO is still on the other side of Mars. At 2:16 MRO is scheduled to come out of "eclipse". If this happens on time, then that’s a strong indication that the burn ran normally, and we have a new spacecraft orbiting Mars.
- 1:32 p.m.: The spacecraft has slowed by 295 mph, and everything still looks good.
- 1:26 p.m.: 1300 miles from Mars, burn still ongoing.
- 1:24 p.m.: The burn has started!
- 1:19 p.m.: The slew completed, and MRO is now oriented correctly for the burn!
- 1:10 p.m.: MRO is turning itself (called slewing) to the "burn attitude", the proper spacecraft orientation so that the rocket firing will put it in the correct orbit. The slew will take a few minutes, and is expected to complete at 1:19.
- 1:05 p.m.: The signal from MRO has been reacquired.
- 1:04 p.m.: MRO is switching to its low-gain antenna, so the signal has been lost for a few minutes while that happens.
- 12:53 p.m.: the spacecraft has undergone a pressurization process that will allow it to make the orbital insertion burn, which is scheduled for 1:24. When that happened, there was a lot of cheering at Mission Control! Had the pressurization no happened, it would have gotten very quiet there.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
heya! I’m liveblogging MRO MOI, too. here: http://www.2020hindsight.org/2006/03/10/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
Cheers,
Susan (in Monrovia, just east o Pasadena and JPL)
March 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy is also live blogging. [...]
March 10th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I work on the U of Arizona campus so I went to the Lunar Planetary Lab (LPL) to watch MOI. They built the HIRISE camera and had quite a few project staff on hand to answer questions and give talks while the coverage was on. Nice event and great to see it in orbit!
March 10th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Thanks BA!
Bravo and mucho kudos to our modern day heros! CLAP, CLAP.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Can’t wait until we start getting those picks…smallest details about a foot long…pretty neat…hey that means maybe we will find all those “lost” probes too?
March 10th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Another success story for our Martian fleet!
Now we really get close looks at Mars from orbit. Heck, we might even make road atlases of the planet now.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Phil,
Do you really think that we will ever be able to colonize Mars or do you think it’s really more or less a pipe dream?
March 10th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Were all of those times you quoted the time the event actually took place, or the time that the signal arrived? I would suspect the latter since the time lag is on the order of 10 minutes, and you’d probably be blogging two entries for each event (one for when it should be happening and one for when we got confirmation).
- Jack
March 11th, 2006 at 4:00 am
As one who saw the Sputnik a few days after launch, and was impressed, I thought myself fortunate to be living in such times. I still have that sense of wonder as I regard it still a privilege to witness, albeit from a fair distance, the successful undertaking of orbitting Mars.Thanks guys for keeping me informed, entertained and thankful I can still be awed by Man’s achievement.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Phil, thanks for the sequence of reports. Of course, I didn’t get to read it until after Ihad already heard about the successful orbital insertion. Still, it’s a far cry from the Mars Climate Orbiter, isn’t it?
March 11th, 2006 at 8:57 am
“Beam me around Mars Scottie”
The thrill is not gone yet (BB King blues riff)
March 11th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Sweet!
I knew the MRO was scheduled, but I didn’t have the chance to keep track as it entered orbit; s’great to hear that it went well. Chalk one up for humanity on the cosmic scoreboard!
March 11th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Weve been getting great pics from THEMIS for quite a while now, how will the MRO be different?
March 13th, 2006 at 11:17 am
I will forward your congrats to my father he will appreciate it.
March 27th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Is it possible that one could find oil or gold on Mars?
March 27th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Gold yes. Oil is doubtfull as it is a organic byproduct. For oil to be there, life would have to have been there at one time.
Yes thats right you have a tankfull of dinosaur remains in your car…
Eeeeewwwwww!!!!