The principal investigator for the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer forMars is Dr. Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,Laurel, Md., which provided the instrument.The orbiter's Context Camera will return images of swaths 30 kilometers (18.6miles) wide. Many of its images will be centered on the narrower swaths being imagedsimultaneously by the high-resolution camera or the imaging spectrometer, or both. Ithas a resolution capable of showing the shapes of features smaller than a tennis court.This instrument will perform roles in both the regional-survey and the targeted-observationmodes. For the targeted mode, it will provide broad yet detailed visual context forinterpreting observations by co-targeted instruments. Over the course of the primaryscience mission, it will produce regional surveys of about 15 percent of the planet'ssurface in relatively high resolution, which is expected to identify many targets for moredetailed inspection. However, its ability to provide extended area imaging at moderatelyhigh resolution will enable it to examine the stratigraphy and morphology of manyregional features and thus directly address key questions about changes in the Martiansurface over geologic time and the roles that water and wind have played in thesechanges.The camera is monochromatic and will produce black-and-white images. It has a singlepassband for visible light at 500 to 700 nanometers). It has a 5.8-degree field of viewrecorded onto a linear array 5,000 pixels wide, providing a resolution of 6 meters (20feet) per pixel.Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif., provided the Context Camera for thismission. Dr. Michael Malin is team leader for use of the instrument.Mars Color Imager will produce daily global views to monitor changes in the atmosphereand on the surface. It can produce color images and see in ultraviolet wavelengths.Each image through the extremely wide-angle lens will catch the planet fromhorizon to horizon with spatial resolution selectable from one kilometer (0.6 mile) perpixel to 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.As a key instrument for the mission's global-monitoring mode, Mars Color Imager willprovide daily weather maps of the entire planet and will track surface changes, such asthe seasonal growing and shrinking of polar frosts and the movement of dust at otherlatitudes. Use of color filters will also enable researchers to identify the composition ofclouds, which may be water ice, carbon-dioxide ice, or dust. Researchers will makeuse of the camera's ultraviolet filters to examine variations in the amount of ozone inthe atmosphere. Ozone serves as a reverse indicator about water in Mars' atmosphere.Where there's more water, there's less ozone, and vice versa.Mars Color Imager is essentially a copy of a camera that flew on the lost Mars ClimateOrbiter mission. However the instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a widerfisheye lens to compensate for planned spacecraft rolls needed to target specific siteson Mars with other instruments. The camera has a field of view of 180 degrees. Itsseven filters include five centered in visible-light wavelengths (425, 550, 600, 650 and725 nanometers) and two in ultraviolet wavelengths (250 and 320 nanometers).Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif., provided this instrument, and Dr.Michael Malin of that company is the principal investigator for it.Mars Climate Sounder will study water vapor, dust, ices and temperatures in Mars'atmosphere. It will assess how they vary with altitude, map how they are distributedaround the planet, and monitor their changes from day to night and from season toseason. The results will aid understanding of the atmosphere's structure and circulation,thus the planet's weather and climate. The instrument looks both toward the horizonand straight down, in a broadband visible and in several thermal infrared channels.Looking toward the horizon, it can observe the atmosphere in vertical slices, assessingeach 5-kilometer-thick (3-mile-thick) section from the surface to an altitude of 80 kilometers(50 miles). The resulting atmospheric profiles from different areas around theplanet can be combined into daily, three-dimensional global weather maps for bothdaytime and nighttime.Mars Climate Sounder is one of the instruments serving the mission's global-monitoringresearch mode. One goal for researchers using it is to examine how solar energyinteracts with the atmosphere and the surface. The measurements will also serveunderstanding of how the atmosphere moves water around the planet seasonally andthe give and take between the surface and the atmosphere in quantities of water anddust. One area of regional focus is the polar regions, where measurements of theamount of solar energy absorbed by the surface ice can be used to estimate theamount of carbon dioxide that is exchanged between the atmosphere and the surfaceduring the Martian year.The Mars Climate Sounder instrument will address the scientific goals of an earlier,much heavier instrument that flew on the ill-fated Mars Observer and Mars ClimateOrbiter spacecraft. It uses a pair of telescopes with apertures of 4 centimeters (1.6inches). They are mounted in a cylinder in a yoke frame articulated so that, withoutrepositioning the spacecraft, the telescopes can point sideways to the horizon and tospace, down onto the planet, or at calibration targets attached to the yoke. Detectorsrecord the intensity of radiation in nine channels or bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.One channel covers visible and near-infrared frequencies from 300 to 3,000nanometers (0.3 to 3 microns). The other eight channels are in the thermal infraredpart of the spectrum, from 12 to 50 microns.Principal investigator for the Mars Climate Sounder is Dr. Daniel McCleese of NASA'sJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and JPL provided the instrument to themission.The orbiter's Shallow Subsurface Radar will probe beneath Mars' surface to findand map underground layers of ice, rock and, if present, liquid water. The informationwill come from the patterns of reflected radio waves transmitted by the instrument. Theinstrument will search to a depth of up to one kilometer (0.6 mile), with the actualdepth of penetration depending on the composition of the upper crust of Mars. It will beable to distinguish between layers of different composition or physical state (e.g., liquid water) as thin as 10 meters (33 feet).The Shallow Subsurface Radar is a regional-survey instrument. Researchers will use itto follow up on the discovery by Mars Odyssey that the top layer of ground in manyparts of Mars holds substantial quantities of hydrogen, believed to be in the form ofwater ice. The Odyssey instruments provided information about the top meter (3 feet)of ground. This radar will allow scientists to determine whether the ice-bearing materialextends much deeper, helping scientists discern whether the ice content results froman equilibrium with the Martian atmosphere of today or persists as a remnant of amuch thicker ice layer formed long ago. The instrument can distinguish icy layers fromwater-bearing layers. If the instrument does find any underground water, those sitescould become landing-site candidates for future Mars rovers or human exploration.Researchers also plan to use the Shallow Radar for mapping the distribution of buriedchannels, studying the internal structure of Mars' ice caps, checking for liquid waterunderneath the ice caps, and examining the extent and relative depths of rock layers inselected regions. The structure of the upper crust may be very complex and so the useof surface observations may be critical to the proper interpretation of the radar data.Thus, areas like the Meridiani Planum region surrounding the rover Opportunity'sresearch area are high-priority targets for radar mapping to see how far the surfacelayers with their water-related minerals extend laterally beneath the surface.The instrument will transmit "chirps" lasting 85 milliseconds each at radio frequenciesfrom 15 megahertz to 25 megahertz (wavelengths of about 15 meters or 50 feet in freespace) with 10 watts of power. In most cases, it will operate on the night side of theplanet. Compared with the only other ground-penetrating radar instrument ever to orbitMars, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding on theEuropean Space Agency's Mars Express, the instrument on Mars ReconnaissanceOrbiter will focus on shallower layers and have higher resolution. The ShallowSubsurface Radar's antenna will extend five meters (16 feet) to each side of thespacecraft. It is stowed in a folded-up configuration for launch and will not be deployeduntil after aerobraking has been completed. During the mission's two-year primary sciencephase, investigations with the Shallow Subsurface Rader are expected to returnmore data than the entire NASA Magellan mission, which mapped 99 percent of thesurface of Venus with an orbiting radar instrument in the early 1990s.The Italian Space Agency (ASI) selected Alenia Spazio, Rome, as the prime contractorfor the Shallow Subsurface Radar and selected Dr. Roberto Seu of the University ofRome La Sapienza as the principal investigator for the instrument's science team. TheItalian Space Agency provided the Shallow Subsurface Radar to NASA as a facility scienceinstrument, with Dr. Seu as team leader. As part of this international collaboration,NASA selected a team of U.S. co-investigators, led by Dr. Roger Phillips of WashingtonUniversity, St. Louis, to support Dr. Seu's team.Two additional facility science investigations will use spacecraft subsystems to conduct scientific investigations of Mars.The Gravity Investigation will track variations in the orbiter's movement during theprimary science phase of the mission in order to map the effects of variations in Mars'gravity on the spacecraft. Gravity provides information on the distribution of mass onand below the surface. Previous orbiters have identified variations in the planet's gravitythat result from regional differences in crustal thickness, seasonal changes in polarcaps and other factors. This spacecraft will yield higher-resolution data because it willbe orbiting at a lower altitude, about 30 percent closer to the planet than Mars GlobalSurveyor or Mars Odyssey. This will allow smaller features on the surface to beresolved in gravity maps.Researchers will use the gravity measurements to study the processes that led to formationof surface features. They expect to study the thinning of the crust beneath theValles Marineris rift zone, to map how volcanic material accumulated beneath thelargest volcanoes and to see how impact structures modified the early Martian crust.They also anticipate that the data will reveal tiny changes in mass distribution as carbondioxide moves from the surface to the atmosphere and back again. (In its frozenform, carbon dioxide is known as dry ice.) From changes in mass revealed by thegravitational effect on the spacecraft, scientists expect to measure how much dry-icesnow falls at high latitudes in the winter. These measurements will contribute to understandingthe weather and climate on Mars.Team leader for this investigation is Dr. Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.The Atmospheric Structure Investigation will measure the vertical structure ofMars' upper atmosphere using sensitive accelerometers throughout the aerobrakingphase of the mission. The rate at which the spacecraft is slowed by atmospheric friction(or drag) is proportional to the density of the air encountered. Thus, the upperatmosphere's effect on the spacecraft's velocity will be analyzed for information aboutchanges in the density of the atmosphere on each of more than 500 orbits, at altitudessometimes as low as 95 kilometers (59 miles) and possibly as high as 200 kilometers(124 miles). The information will guide safe aerobraking because knowledge of thechanging upper atmosphere is critical for avoiding excessive friction that would overheatthe spacecraft. This investigation will also contribute directly to the mission's scienceresults, particularly regarding the major question of where Mars' ancient waterhas gone.From the vertical structure of atmospheric density, scientists can determine atmospherictemperature and pressure. These may be clues to the fate of the water that wasclearly on the Mars surface billions of years ago. One possibility is that water moleculesare broken up by solar radiation into atomic hydrogen and oxygen, with thehydrogen escaping into outer space; another possibility is that some of the water isunderground. The Atmospheric Structure Investigation will address the first possibility,loss of water via the escape of hydrogen to outer space. If the upper atmosphere iswarm enough, some of the hydrogen atoms would have enough energy to escape the planet. Determining the density and temperature of the atmosphere will improve estimatesof this loss process.Other information about Mars atmosphere could also come from this investigation, justas discoveries resulted from the team's similar accelerometer measurements duringaerobraking phases of the earlier Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions.The Global Surveyor investigation determined that even intermediate-size dust stormsin the southern hemisphere immediately produced threefold increases of density in thenorthern hemisphere at aerobraking altitudes. These increases could have put the missionat risk if the spacecraft had not been raised to a higher altitude. The team alsodiscovered enormous planetary-scale waves in density, which could also put thespacecraft at risk. Investigators developed techniques to predict when the spacecraftwould fly through the peaks and valleys of these waves to establish safe aerobrakingaltitudes. During Odyssey's aerobraking, the team discovered "winter polar warming"near the north pole of Mars at high altitudes. North polar Martian winter atmospherictemperatures were warmer than expected by about 100 degrees Kelvin (180 degreesFahrenheit). Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Atmospheric Structure investigators willsearch for similar winter warming near the south pole.A new electronics design by Honeywell is expected to improve the signal-to-noise ratioof the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's accelerometers by more than a factor of 100over the accelerometers on Mars Odyssey. This should allow measurements to bemade at much higher altitudes than in the past, substantially improving estimates ofthe environment where hydrogen may escape. The investigation should also establishthe nature of atmospheric changes due to variations in altitude, latitude, season,time-of-day, Mars-Sun distance, meteorological activity, dust storm activity, and solaractivity.Dr. Gerald Keating of George Washington University, Washington, is the team leaderfor this investigation.Ares 1-X PatchThe official embroidered patch for the Ares 1-X rocket test flight, is available for purchase.Apollo CollageThis beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.Expedition 21The official embroidered patch for the International Space Station Expedition 21 crew is now available from our stores.Hubble PatchThe official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle's last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase. | | | | 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.Science objectivesFROM NASA PRESS KIT
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