China Plans to Launch Carrier Rocket at Sea

CASC - China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation logo.

May 17, 2019

China plans to launch a Long March-11 carrier rocket at sea this year, which is expected to lower the cost of entering space.

The rocket has been named "CZ-11 WEY" under an agreement between the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China Space Foundation and a Chinese automobile producer.

The seaborne launch technology will help China provide launch services for countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Long March-11, with a length of 20.8 meters and a takeoff weight of about 57.6 tonnes, is the only rocket using solid propellants among China's new generation carrier rockets. It has a relatively simple structure and can be launched in a short time.

The rocket can carry a payload of up to 350 kg to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 km and 700 kg to a low-Earth orbit at 200 km. It is mainly used to carry small satellites, and can take multiple satellites into orbit at the same time.

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC):
http://english.spacechina.com/n16421/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: CASC/Xinhua.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Taps 11 American Companies to Advance Human Lunar Landers

NASA logo.

May 16, 2019

NASA has selected 11 companies to conduct studies and produce prototypes of human landers for its Artemis lunar exploration program. This effort will help put American astronauts — the first woman and next man — on the Moon’s south pole by 2024 and establish sustainable missions by 2028.

“To accelerate our return to the Moon, we are challenging our traditional ways of doing business. We will streamline everything from procurement to partnerships to hardware development and even operations,” said Marshall Smith, director for human lunar exploration programs at NASA Headquarters. “Our team is excited to get back to the Moon quickly as possible, and our public/private partnerships to study human landing systems are an important step in that process.”

Illustration of a human landing system. Image Credit: NASA

Through Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Appendix E contracts, the selected companies will study and/or develop prototypes during the next six months that reduce schedule risk for the descent, transfer, and refueling elements of a potential human landing system.

NASA’s proposed plan is to transport astronauts in a human landing system that includes a transfer element for the journey from the lunar Gateway to low-lunar orbit, a descent element to carry them to the surface, and an ascent element to return to them to the Gateway. The agency also is looking at refueling capabilities to make these systems reusable.

The total award amount for all companies is $45.5 million. As NextSTEP is a public/private partnership program, companies are required to contribute at least 20% of the total project cost. This partnership will reduce costs to taxpayers and encourage early private investments in the lunar economy.

The awardees, from eight states across the country, are:
- Aerojet Rocketdyne – Canoga Park, California
   One transfer vehicle study

- Blue Origin – Kent, Washington
  One descent element study, one transfer vehicle study, and one transfer vehicle prototype

- Boeing – Houston
  One descent element study, two descent element prototypes, one transfer vehicle study, one transfer vehicle prototype, one refueling element study, and one refueling element prototype

- Dynetics – Huntsville, Alabama
  One descent element study and five descent element prototypes

- Lockheed Martin – Littleton, Colorado
  One descent element study, four descent element prototypes, one transfer vehicle study, and one refueling element study

- Masten Space Systems – Mojave, California
  One descent element prototype

- Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems – Dulles, Virginia
  One descent element study, four descent element prototypes, one refueling element study, and one refueling element prototype

- OrbitBeyond – Edison, New Jersey
  Two refueling element prototypes

- Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, Colorado, and Madison, Wisconsin
  One descent element study, one descent element prototype, one transfer vehicle study, one transfer vehicle prototype, and one refueling element study

- SpaceX – Hawthorne, California
  One descent element study

- SSL – Palo Alto, California
  One refueling element study and one refueling element prototype

To expedite the work, NASA is invoking undefinitized contract actions, which allow the agency to authorize partners to start a portion of the work, while negotiations toward contract award continue in parallel.

“We’re taking major steps to begin development as quickly as possible, including invoking a NextSTEP option that allows our partners to begin work while we’re still negotiating,” said Greg Chavers, human landing system formulation manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We’re keen to collect early industry feedback about our human landing system requirements, and the undefinitized contract action will help us do that.”

NASA gave industry its first heads up in April, with the issuance of a pre-solicitation, of its intention to partner with American companies on the development of an integrated lander. The formal solicitation, to be issued this summer, will provide the requirements for a 2024 human landing, and leave it to U.S. industry to propose innovative concepts, hardware development and integration.

“This new approach doesn’t prescribe a specific design or number of elements for the human landing system,” Chavers said. “NASA needs the system to get our astronauts on the surface and return them home safely, and we’re leaving a lot of the specifics to our commercial partners.”

NASA is sending astronauts to the Moon and then on to Mars, in a measured and sustainable way. The direction from Space Policy Directive-1 builds on the hard work NASA is doing on its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, agency efforts to enable commercial partners, its work with international partners, and what NASA learns from its current robotic missions at the Moon and Mars. Learn more at: https://www.nasa.gov/moontomars

Lunar Gateway: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/lunar-outpost

Space Policy Directive-1: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-space-policy-directive-calls-for-human-expansion-across-solar-system

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Sean Potter/Gina Anderson/Cheryl Warner.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s New Horizons Team Publishes First Kuiper Belt Flyby Science Results

NASA - New Horizons Mission patch.

May 16, 2019

Most distant object ever explored presents mysteries of its formation.

NASA’s New Horizons mission team has published the first profile of the farthest world ever explored, a planetary building block and Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69.

Analyzing just the first sets of data gathered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s New Year’s 2019 flyby of MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) the mission team quickly discovered an object far more complex than expected. The team publishes the first peer-reviewed scientific results and interpretations – just four months after the flyby – in the May 17 issue of the journal Science.

Image above: Total Teamwork: Aside from the scientific results it contains, the New Horizons Science paper summarizing early findings from the flyby of Ultima Thule is noteworthy for another reason: it has more than 200 co-authors, representing more than 40 institutions. Principal Investigator Alan Stern, as mission head and lead author, thought it important to give authorship to the full range of team members who had role on the successful flyby. As a result, Stern’s paper includes authors from the science, spacecraft, operations, mission design, management and communications teams, as well as collaborators, such as contributing scientist and stereo imaging specialist (and legendary Queen guitarist) Brian May, NASA Planetary Division Director Lori Glaze, NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green, and NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen. Image Credits: AAAS/Science.

In addition to being the farthest exploration of an object in history – four billion miles from Earth – the flyby of Ultima Thule was also the first investigation by any space mission of a well-preserved planetesimal, an ancient relic from the era of planet formation.

The initial data summarized in Science reveal much about the object’s development, geology and composition. It’s a contact binary, with two distinctly differently shaped lobes. At about 22 miles (36 kilometers) long, Ultima Thule consists of a large, strangely flat lobe (nicknamed "Ultima") connected to a smaller, somewhat rounder lobe (nicknamed "Thule"), at a juncture nicknamed “the neck.” How the two lobes got their unusual shape is an unanticipated mystery that likely relates to how they formed billions of years ago.

The lobes likely once orbited each other, like many so-called binary worlds in the Kuiper Belt, until some process brought them together in what scientists have shown to be a "gentle" merger. For that to happen, much of the binary’s orbital momentum must have dissipated for the objects to come together, but scientists don't yet know whether that was due to aerodynamic forces from gas in the ancient solar nebula, or if Ultima and Thule ejected other lobes that formed with them to dissipate energy and shrink their orbit. The alignment of the axes of Ultima and Thule indicates that before the merger the two lobes must have become tidally locked, meaning that the same sides always faced each other as they orbited around the same point.

New Horizons Ultima Thule flyby. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL

“We’re looking into the well-preserved remnants of the ancient past,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “There is no doubt that the discoveries made about Ultima Thule are going to advance theories of solar system formation.”

As the Science paper reports, New Horizons researchers are also investigating a range of surface features on Ultima Thule, such as bright spots and patches, hills and troughs, and craters and pits on Ultima Thule. The largest depression is a 5-mile-wide (8-kilometer-wide) feature the team has nicknamed Maryland crater – which likely formed from an impact. Some smaller pits on the Kuiper Belt object, however, may have been created by material falling into underground spaces, or due to exotic ices going from a solid to a gas (called sublimation) and leaving pits in its place.

In color and composition, Ultima Thule resembles many other objects found in its area of the Kuiper Belt. It’s very red – redder even than much larger, 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer) wide Pluto, which New Horizons explored at the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt in 2015 – and is in fact the reddest outer solar system object ever visited by spacecraft; its reddish hue is believed to be caused by modification of the organic materials on its surface New Horizons scientists found evidence for methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface – a mixture very different from most icy objects explored previously by spacecraft.

Image above: This composite image of the primordial contact binary Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) – featured on the cover of the May 17 issue of the journal Science – was compiled from data obtained by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the object on Jan. 1, 2019. The image combines enhanced color data (close to what the human eye would see) with detailed high-resolution panchromatic pictures. Image Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko.

Data transmission from the flyby continues, and will go on until the late summer 2020. In the meantime, New Horizons continues to carry out new observations of additional Kuiper Belt objects it passes in the distance. These additional KBOs are too distant to reveal discoveries like those on MU69, but the team can measure aspects such as the object’s brightness. New Horizons also continues to map the charged-particle radiation and dust environment in the Kuiper Belt.

The New Horizons spacecraft is now 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth, operating normally and speeding deeper into the Kuiper Belt at nearly 33,000 miles (53,000 kilometers) per hour.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The MSFC Planetary Management Office provides the NASA oversight for the New Horizons. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Stern, and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Science journal: https://www.sciencemag.org/

New Horizons: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tricia Talbert.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Immunology Research for Crew Health and Computer Spacewalk Training Today

ISS - Expedition 59 Mission patch.

May 16, 2019

Critical life science continues apace aboard the International Space Station today helping NASA support human missions to the Moon and beyond. The Expedition 59 crew is also gearing up for another maintenance spacewalk at the end of May.

Two NASA astronauts and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut kept up their busy science schedule today with more immunology research in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. The three flight engineers, Christina Koch, Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques, have been observing how the rodent immune system, which are similar to that in humans, respond to microgravity. Doctors plan to use the results to help keep astronauts healthier in space and treat people on the ground with Earth-bound ailments.

Image above: NASA astronaut Nick Hague conducts research operations in the Microgravity Sciences Glovebox exploring why pathogens become more virulent in outer space. Image Credit: NASA.

Flight Engineer Nick Hague continued his weeklong research to understand why pathogens become more virulent in the weightless environment of outer space. Doctors want to boost an astronaut’s space-exposed immune system to prevent further impacts by opportunistic pathogens. Hague also swapped protein crystal samples in a specialized microscope for a biophysics experiment exploring cancer treatment and radiation protection.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

Two cosmonauts are preparing for the next spacewalk at the orbital lab scheduled for May 29. Commander Oleg Kononenko joined Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin for a computer training session today reviewing their spacewalk activities and worksites on the Russian side of the orbital lab. The duo will spend about six hours removing experiments, sampling station surfaces and jettisoning obsolete hardware.

Related links:

Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html

U.S. Destiny laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/us-destiny-laboratory

Pathogens: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7642

Specialized microscope: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=531

Biophysics experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7743

Moon and beyond: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/moon2mars/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Observes Creative Destruction as Galaxies Collide

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

16 May 2019

On the verge. Image credits: ESA, NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a new look at the spectacular irregular galaxy NGC 4485, which has been warped and wound by its larger galactic neighbour. The gravity of the second galaxy has disrupted the ordered collection of stars, gas and dust, giving rise to an erratic region of newborn, hot, blue stars and chaotic clumps and streams of dust and gas.

The irregular galaxy NGC 4485 has been involved in a dramatic gravitational interplay with its larger galactic neighbour NGC 4490 — out of frame to the bottom right in this image. Found about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), the strange result of these interacting galaxies has resulted in an entry in the Atlas of Peculiar galaxies: Arp 269.

Image above: Distant view of a galactic crash — NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 (ground-based image). Image Credits: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 (Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin).

Having already made their closest approach, NGC 4485 and NGC 4490 are now moving away from each other, vastly altered from their original states. Still engaged in a destructive yet creative dance, the gravitational force between them continues to warp each of them out of all recognition, while at the same time creating the conditions for huge regions of intense star formation.

Zoom-in on NGC 4485

This galactic tug-of-war has created a stream of material about 25 000 light-years long which connects the two galaxies. The stream is made up of bright knots and huge pockets of gassy regions, as well as enormous regions of star formation in which young, massive, blue stars are born. Short-lived, however, these stars quickly run out of fuel and end their lives in dramatic explosions. While such an event seems to be purely destructive, it also enriches the cosmic environment with heavier elements and delivers new material to form a new generation of stars.

Pan on NGC 4485

Two very different regions are now apparent in NGC 4485; on the left are hints of the galaxy’s previous spiral structure, which was at one time undergoing “normal” galactic evolution. The right of the image reveals a portion of the galaxy ripped towards its larger neighbour, bursting with hot, blue stars and streams of dust and gas.

This image, captured by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope, adds light through two new filters compared with an image released in 2014. The new data provide further insights into the complex and mysterious field of galaxy evolution.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Animation Credits: NASA/ESA

More information:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Links:

Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

2014 release of NGC 4485: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1419a/

Hubble Space Telescope (HST): https://www.spacetelescope.org/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA/Bethany Downer/Videos: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

A quarter of glacier ice in West Antarctica is now unstable

ESA - CRYOSAT Mission logo.

16 May 2019

By combining 25 years of ESA satellite data, scientists have discovered that warming ocean waters have caused the ice to thin so rapidly that 24% of the glacier ice in West Antarctica is now affected.

A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters describes how the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) used over 800 million measurements of Antarctic ice sheet height recorded by radar altimeter instruments on ESA’s ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat and CryoSat satellite missions between 1992 and 2017.

 Antarctic ice loss 1992–2019

The study also used simulations of snowfall over the same period produced by the RACMO regional climate model. Together, these measurements allow changes in ice-sheet height to be separated into those caused by meteorological events, which affect snow, and those caused by longer-term changes in climate, which affect ice.

The ice sheet has thinned by up to 122 metres in places, with the most rapid changes occurring in West Antarctica where ocean melting has triggered glacier imbalance. CPOM Director, Andy Shepherd, explained, “Parts of Antarctica have thinned by extraordinary amounts. So we set out to show how much was down to changes in climate and how much was instead due to weather.”

To do this, the team compared measurements of surface-height change with the simulated changes in snowfall. Where the signal was greater they attributed its origin to glacier imbalance.

They found that fluctuations in snowfall tend to drive small changes in height over large areas for a few years at a time, whereas the most pronounced changes in ice thickness coincide with signals of glacier imbalance that have persisted for decades.

CryoSat

Prof. Shepherd added, “Knowing how much snow has fallen has really helped us to isolate the glacier imbalance within the satellite record. We can see clearly now that a wave of thinning has spread rapidly across some of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers, and their losses are driving up sea levels around the planet.

“After 25 years, the pattern of glacier thinning has spread across 24% of West Antarctica, and its largest ice streams – the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers – are now losing ice five times faster than they were in the 1990s.

“Altogether, ice losses from East and West Antarctica have added 4.6 mm of water to global sea level since 1992.”

ESA’s Marcus Engdahl, noted, “This is a fantastic demonstration of how satellite missions can help us to understand how our planet is changing. The polar regions are hostile environments and are extremely difficult to access from the ground. Because of this, the view from space is an essential tool for tracking the effects of climate change.”

Scientific results such as this are key to understanding how our planet works and how natural processes are being affected by climate change – and ice is a hot topic at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, which is currently in full swing in Milan. This study demonstrates that the changing climate is causing real changes in the far reaches of the Antarctic.

Related links:

Geophysical Research Letters: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL082182

Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling: http://cpom.org.uk/

RACMO regional climate model: http://www2.projects.science.uu.nl/iceclim/models/racmo.php

Living Planet Symposium: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Living_Planet_Symposium

Related missions:

CryoSat: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat

Envisat: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Envisat

ERS: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ERS_overview

Animation, Image, Text, Credits: ESA/P. Carril/CPOM.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's MRO Completes 60,000 Trips Around Mars

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) logo.

May 16, 2019

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter hit a dizzying milestone this morning: It completed 60,000 loops around the Red Planet at 10:39 a.m. PDT (1:39 p.m. EDT). On average, MRO takes 112 minutes to circle Mars, whipping around at about 2 miles per second (3.4 kilometers per second).

Image above: This still from an animation shows NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter soaring over Mars. The spacecraft has been in Mars orbit for 13 years, and just completed 60,000 trips around the planet. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Since entering orbit on March 10, 2006, the spacecraft has been collecting daily science about the planet's surface and atmosphere, including detailed views with its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE). HiRISE is powerful enough to see surface features the size of a dining room table from 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the surface.

Meanwhile, MRO is watching the daily weather and probing the subsurface for ice, providing data that can influence the designs of future missions that will take humans to Mars.

But MRO isn't just sending back its own science; it serves in a network of relays that beam data back to Earth from NASA's Mars rovers and landers. Later this month, MRO will hit another milestone: It will have relayed 1 terabit of data, largely from NASA's Curiosity rover. If you've ever enjoyed one of Curiosity's selfies or sprawling landscapes or wondered at its scientific discoveries, MRO probably helped make them possible.

"MRO has given scientists and the public a new perspective of Mars," said Project Manager Dan Johnston at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which leads the mission. "We've also supported NASA's fleet of Mars surface missions, allowing them to send their images and discoveries back to scientists on Earth."

Eyes in the Sky

While rovers and landers can study only their immediate vicinity, orbiters can view wide swaths of the entire planet; MRO can actually target any point on the Martian globe approximately once every two weeks.

HiRISE Spots CO₂ Ice Sublimating

Animation above: This series of images shows carbon dioxide ice sublimating (going directly from a solid to a gas) inside a pit at Mars' south pole. Each frame of the animation was taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

MRO's aerial perspective also provides scientists a complementary view of a dynamic planet. As seasons change, they can see avalanches and cloud patterns. HiRISE has imaged CO₂ ice sublimating, migrating sand dunes and meteorite strikes reshaping the landscape. With its Mars Climate Sounder instrument and its Mars Color Imager camera, MRO can also study atmospheric events like the massive global dust storm that proved fatal to NASA's Opportunity rover in 2018.

"Mars is our laboratory," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL. "After more than a decade, we've collected enough data to formulate and test hypotheses to see how they change or hold up over time."

Daily Calls to Earth

MRO is one of several orbiters that send data from Mars to Earth each day. The same way MRO is the primary relay for Curiosity, Odyssey (NASA's longest-lived orbiter) is the primary relay for the agency's latest Martian inhabitant, InSight. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter recently started changing its orbit in preparation to cover the Mars 2020 rover's entry after it lands in February 2021. After data is sent up to an orbiter, it's beamed to giant antennas at one of three locations around Earth, all of which are part of NASA's Deep Space Network.

That relay network is now international. The European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter has been carrying an ever-increasing share of data sent from the surface. And all of these orbiters are preparing for the arrival of ESA's Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover, which is scheduled to land the same year as Mars 2020.

Mars Landings

Orbiters like MRO and Odyssey are snap-happy, constantly imaging potential landing sites for future missions. But after a site has been selected and a mission is sent to Mars, orbiters play another critical role.

Before a surface mission can begin conducting science, it has to land safely. Successful landings require clocklike precision so that the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at just the right angle, the parachute opens at the right time and sensors detect the rapidly approaching surface.

Jezero Crater, Mars 2020's Landing Site

Image above: This image of Jezero Crater on Mars, the landing site for NASA's Mars 2020 mission, was taken by instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which regularly takes images of potential landing sites for future missions. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL.

MRO and other orbiters serve as black boxes, recording data about each landing, which grow more difficult with the sort of added mass that comes with a mission like Mars 2020. Engineers use the data to design safer missions - which will be key to sending astronauts to Mars. With plans to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024, NASA is looking ahead at humans exploring the Red Planet, too.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The University of Arizona in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, provided and operates MARCI.

Related links:

High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE): https://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/

Deep Space Network: https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/news/

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Images Gallery: https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/

For additional information about MRO, visit: http://nasa.gov/mro and  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch