But will it explain global warming on Mars
Doug sounds like Barby talking about math.After a flawless seven-month voyage, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is poised to join a small armada of U.S. and European spacecraft already circling the Red Planet or roving across its rugged surface, space agency officials said Friday.
The orbiter, the cornerstone of a $720 million, five-year voyage, is on course to maneuver into orbit around Mars on March 10, the officials said in a briefing held to detail the mission.
The spacecraft is equipped to scan the planet's heavily scarred, desertlike terrain with high-powered cameras and use radar to probe up to a half-mile below the surface in search of underground ice deposits.
Allied with its robotic companions, the orbiter will look for new evidence that Mars was once warm and wet enough to host some form of life before undergoing a dramatic climate change. The craft will scout out potential landing sites for at least two future NASA spacecraft designed to continue the quest.
"Mars is hard," NASA's Doug McCuistion cautioned at the Washington news briefing, which was broadcast to Johnson Space Center. "Mars can be unpredictable."
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