Posted by jburk to Face On Mars at May 25, 2001 12:00 PM

A key aspect of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Extended Mission is the opportunity to turn the spacecraft and point the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) at specific features of interest. A chance to point the spacecraft comes about ten times a week. Throughout the Primary Mission (March 1999 - January 2001), nearly all MGS operations were conducted with the spacecraft pointing "nadir" -- that is, straight down. In this orientation, opportunities to hit a specific small feature of interest were in some cases rare, and in other cases non-existant.