Week in Geek - Martian Decade
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter By the Numbers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
My weekly post for The Rachel Maddow Show.
Week in Geek: Martian decade edition
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter just celebrated its tenth anniversary at the Red Planet.
MRO has been orbiting Mars since early 2006 when it began mapping the planet’s surface in detail in order to identify and characterize landing sites for future missions. The workhorse instrument on-board MRO is the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. HiRISE has a resolution of 0.3 meters per pixel which allows it to resolve objects on Mars less than a meter across from an altitude of over 150 miles.
Also features: skull caps, cotton candy, BB-8, and Guinness.
Read the full article here.
