Mars Global Surveyor
Mars Global Surveyor — a NASA orbiter launched on 7 November 1996, in orbit around Mars from 12 September 1997. A solar panel that had not latched slowed its aerobraking, and it began mapping from a low polar orbit in March 1999. Its laser altimeter measured the shape of Mars, its magnetometer found stripes of magnetism in the ancient crust, its camera photographed gullies on crater walls and slopes, and its spectrometer found grey hematite, a water-related mineral, where NASA later landed the Opportunity rover. Contact was lost on 2 November 2006; NASA's review traced the loss to a series of events set off by a computer error. It is still in orbit around Mars. (Its orbit is drawn at its mapping height; its orientation and position on it are representative.)
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- NASA / JPL
- Launched
- November 7, 1996
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 1.57 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 1.54 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Mars
- 5,420,745 km
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
Mars Global Surveyor, built by Lockheed Martin for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was launched on a Delta II 7925 from Cape Canaveral on 7 November 1996 at 17:00 UTC. After a ten-month cruise it fired its engine at 01:17 UTC on 12 September 1997 and entered a 45-hour orbit that came within about 260 km of Mars. To reach its mapping orbit it used aerobraking, dipping into the upper atmosphere on each pass to slow down. One of its solar panels had not latched after it unfolded, so the campaign was eased off, paused from April to September 1998 and resumed, ending in February 1999. Mapping began in March 1999 from a near-circular polar orbit, about 378 km up by NSSDCA's figure (235 km in NASA's history Beyond Earth), that passed over each place at the same local time. The primary mission ended in 2001 and was extended again and again. Its laser altimeter measured the shape of Mars in detail; its magnetometer found stripes of magnetism in the ancient crust; and its thermal emission spectrometer found grey hematite, a water-related mineral, in Meridiani Planum, where NASA landed the Opportunity rover in 2004. Its camera returned more than 240,000 images, among them gullies on crater walls that its team read in 2000 as evidence of recent groundwater seepage; later work with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter concluded that such gullies are mainly formed by the seasonal freezing of carbon dioxide, not liquid water. On 2 November 2006 it stopped answering. NASA's review traced the loss to a series of events linked to a computer error made five months earlier: the craft turned so that one battery faced the Sun and overheated, and within 11 hours its depleted batteries likely left it unable to control its orientation. It is still in orbit around Mars.
- 1996Mars Global Surveyor launches toward Mars on a Delta II rocketLaunch
A 45-hour orbit, the start of a long aerobraking campaign.
- 1999Mapping beginsMilestone
From a low polar orbit that passes over each place at the same local time.
- 2006Contact lostMission end
After a series of events set off by a computer error; it remains in orbit.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image