Скачать или смотреть WRAP NASA spacecraft successfully enters Mars orbit

(11 Mar 2006)

NASA TV
FILE
1. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) approaching Mars
2. MRO firing thrusters and entering Mars orbit
3. MRO in orbit
4. MRO deploying sensors

NASA TV
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, 10 March 2006
5. Wide of JPL
6. Various of scientists
7. Medium shot of Jim Graf
8. Monitor of MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter)
9. Various of scientists cheering
10. Wide of media conference
11. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jim Graf, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager:
"We started out on the 12th of August. It was a picture perfect launch. And I've got to tell you that the whole mission is continuing along the same way. Today was picture perfect."

NASA TV
FILE
12. Camera opening on MRO
13. Animation of scanning of Mars surface
14. MRO taking off on rocket
15. Rocket in flight
16. Technicians working on MRO
17. Various close ups of technicians working on MRO
18. Unfolding the solar array of the MRO

STORYLINE:

A NASA spacecraft successfully slipped into orbit around Mars on Friday, joining a constellation of orbiters already circling the Red Planet, after a critical firing of its engines and anxious minutes of silence.

Scientists cheered and applauded after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter emerged from the planet's shadow and signalled to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the manoeuvre was a success.

Minutes later, relieved project manager Jim Graf said, "It was picture perfect."

The two-ton spacecraft is the most sophisticated ever to arrive at Mars and is expected to gather more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian missions combined.

It will explore Mars and serve as a communications relay in low orbit for four years and is expected to churn out the most detailed information ever about the planet and its climate and landscape.

In the fall, the orbiter will begin exploring the Martian atmosphere, scan the surface for evidence of ancient water and scout for future landing sites to send robotic and possibly human explorers.

The $720 million mission is managed by JPL in Pasadena.

After a seven-month, 310 million-mile journey, the orbiter arrived at Mars on Friday for the risky orbit insertion phase.

Project managers had been nervous because of Mars' reputation of swallowing scientific probes.

But the Reconnaissance Orbiter performed the move without problem.

As it neared the planet, it fired its main propulsion engines for 27 minutes to slow itself down so that the planet's gravity could pull it into orbit.

At one point during the burn, the spacecraft disappeared behind Mars - as engineers had planned - and was temporarily out of radio contact with controllers.

Mission control was visibly tense as it awaited word from the orbiter, which reappeared and signalled that it had entered into an elliptical orbit around Mars that will swing it as close as 250 miles above the surface.

The successful mission was welcome news for NASA, which has a mixed record of putting spacecraft into orbit around Mars.

In the past 15 years, NASA lost two orbiters back-to-back - the Mars Observer in 1993 and the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 - during the orbit insertion phase.

The Reconnaissance Orbiter is the fourth eye on the Martian sky, joining NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's Mars Express, which have been mapping the planet the past few years.


The spacecraft won't beam back images or data until November.



The Reconnaissance Orbiter's primary mission will end in 2010.

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