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Surveyor ready to map Mars
September 12, 1997
Web posted at: 12:10 p.m. EDT (1610 GMT)PASADENA, California (CNN) -- With the Mars Global Surveyor in orbit, NASA scientists said Friday they hoped to get a complete overview of Mars to go along with the ground view Pathfinder has been providing since it landed on the planet surface two months ago.
The Surveyor spacecraft fired its main rocket Thursday and went into an elliptical orbit about 250 miles above Mars for a mapping mission intended to yield the best understanding yet of Earth's neighbor.
"Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) has a different role than Pathfinder," said Norm Haynes, the director of Mars exploration for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Its role is to determine the geology and perhaps the past history of Mars and its climate," he told CNN in a live interview.
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MGS was designed to compile global maps of Mars, return high-resolution pictures and collect data on its atmosphere, mineral composition, interior and evolution, Haynes said.
He said a few "not particularly good" pictures from MGS were expected in two or three days. However, the mission's mapping work doesn't begin until March.
Beginning Tuesday and continuing over four months, Haynes said, controllers will rely on a procedure called aerobraking, using friction between MGS and the Mars' atmosphere to trim the spacecraft's elliptical orbit to a near-circle 234 miles above the planet.
MGS, launched November 7 from Kennedy Space Center, was partially built with spare parts from the ill-fated Mars Observer spacecraft. It was lost in space three days before it was due to enter orbit in August 1993.
Scientists say Surveyor should be able to carry out about 75 percent of Observer's mission.
Correspondent John Holliman contributed to this report.
Mars Board | Surveyor | Pathfinder | Future Missions | Interact | Multiplex
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- Mars satellite passes critical point - September 9, 1997
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- Surveyor soars toward red planet - November 7, 1996
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