NASA spacecraft has taken the first-ever image of an avalanche in action near Mars' north pole. The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. The image, released today, shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down. The camera was tracking seasonal changes on Mars when it inadvertently caught the avalanche on film. HiRISE mission scientist Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona was the first person to notice the avalanche when sifting through images.

Less than a year since beginning the prime science phase of its mission, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has passed a mission-success milestone for the amount of data returned. The data-volume target of 26 terabytes, which was surpassed this week, is equivalent to about 5,000 CD-ROMs full and exceeds the total from all other current and past Mars missions combined. The biggest shares of the data come from two of the orbiter's six science instruments: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. The high-resolution camera's team of investigators, based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, today released 143 color images. The images reveal features as small as a desk. They are valuable to researchers studying possible landing sites for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2009 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars.

A super-powerful camera orbiting Mars may help discover the fate of long-lost spacecraft that never phoned home after reaching the red planet. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is now circling that puzzling world, equipped to assist in determining whether life ever arose on the red planet and characterize its climate and geology, as well as prepare for future expeditionary crews to land there. But another sharp-shooting skill of MRO is catching sight of past probes—craft that ran into trouble and died in the line of Mars duty. That includes NASA’s gone but not forgotten Mars Polar Lander and the British-built Beagle 2.

NASA’s newest Mars orbiter has spied the plucky rover Opportunity perched at the rim of the red planet’s massive Victoria Crater as both vehicles explore the fourth planet from the Sun. Appearing almost as a shiny boulder, Opportunity’s lumpy outline and its camera mast shadow can easily be seen in a high-resolution image of Victoria Crater taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and released by the space agency on Friday. “It is so good to see that rover again,” said Steve Squyres, the lead Mars Exploration Rover scientist from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, during a press briefing. “I’ve got to say that image with that little rover 200 million miles away, parked at the top of that cliff, that’s just one of the most evocative images I’ve ever seen in the planetary program…it’s just beautiful.”

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has completed aerobraking and its primary science phase will soon begin in earnest. MRO’s Project Scientist and members of the Navigation Team discuss the intricacies and challenges of aerobraking in Mars’ ever-changing atmosphere. Aerobraking is a technique that was first used by the Magellan mission to Venus in 1993, and also used on two other Mars missions, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) in 1997 and Mars Odyssey (2001). Aerobraking uses repeated dips into the atmosphere to gradually slow the spacecraft and reduce the size of the orbit. While aerobraking takes time, it saves on the amount fuel required, as in MRO’s case, by 600 kilograms (1,300 pounds). To aid in the aerobraking process, the navigation team employs an atmospheric model called the Mars-GRAM (Global Reference Atmospheric Model), a computer database of information from what previous missions have encountered, combined with a mathematical model that attempts to simulate Mars’ atmospheric dynamics. This provides a prediction of the density of Mars’ atmosphere, giving the navigators an estimate of how far down into the atmosphere the spacecraft should go. But the atmospheric density that MRO actually experienced was much different than what was predicted by the Mars GRAM.

NASA's newest Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, completed its aerobraking phase last week, settling into an orbit that takes it around the red planet in just under two hours instead of the 36-hour circuit it started with. It took five months to maneuver it into this desired orbit using the tricky technique known as aerobraking — dipping into the planet's atmosphere to slow the spacecraft and reshape its orbit — but it saved about $15 million, said Jim Murphy, head of the astronomy department at New Mexico State University. That's about what it would have cost to carry enough fuel to use the spacecraft's rocket engines to maneuver it into the desired orbit, he said.

When NASA launched a pair of rovers to Mars more than three years ago, no one ever thought the darn things would still be working by now, says Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, the top scientist for the Red Planet rover missions. The proof of that lies in the fix that the Mars program finds itself in today, with two separate missions transmitting on exactly the same frequency. The data traffic jam isn't insurmountable, Squyres says, but it just goes to show that even a smashing success can carry complications.

NASA’s newest mission to the red planet—the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)—is working well as it shaves off altitude in order to swing into active science-gathering duties later this year. The initial capture by Mars’ gravity put the spacecraft into a very elongated, 35-hour orbit.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) began the six-month aerobraking phase with rehearsals or drag passes last Friday and tomorrow night the spacecraft will dip down for its first "taste" of the Red Planet's atmosphere. "We're putting the spacecraft through its paces," said Peter Xaypraseuth, MRO flight engineer in an interview with The Planetary Society earlier today. "We're telling it to do the exact things it would be doing for each upcoming aerobraking pass, except that we're actually not going to be touching or sensing the atmosphere. It's kind of a mock rehearsal." In other words, everything is real, he said, "except the altitude."

The most advanced spacecraft to reach Mars has begun adjusting its orbit so that it can study the planet in detail this fall, scientists said Friday. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its thrusters for nearly a minute Thursday to lower its orbit, a step toward the tricky aerobraking process during which the spacecraft will repeatedly dip into the upper atmosphere starting next week.

A $450 million NASA spacecraft dropped smoothly into orbit around Mars on Friday, successfully completing a risky make-or-break maneuver in its two-year mission to search the red planet for life and find landing spots for future astronauts. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena erupted in cheers when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which left Earth in August, signaled that it had achieved orbit around a planet that has defeated two-thirds of the probes sent there.

Jittery NASA scientists waited on Wednesday for the most advanced spacecraft ever sent to another planet to make its risky final approach to Mars, where it is due to return 10 times the data of all previous probes put together.

When NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reaches the Red Planet next month, it will immediately seek out areas where water once flowed, try to identify habitats where ancient life might have thrived, and start mapping the entire planet in unprecedented detail. But the orbiter's arrival at Mars will also set the stage for a new epoch in spacecraft telecommunications. Its onboard Electra UHF relay transceiver [see photo, "Relay"] will serve as an engineering test bed for new communications and navigation technology that will be required for all future orbiters, landers, and rovers, to provide the faster data rates required for transfer of information from rovers and landers on the Martian surface to orbiters circling above.

Richard L. James writes "As reported on the Mars-net email list Flight Refuelling Amateur Radio Society's resident satcom + WLAN guru Paul J. Marsh (M0EYT) has managed to detect and receive NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on X band at a staggering range of 45 million miles from Earth using a home made receiver setup and a RFspace SDR-14 software radio."

A NASA spacecraft is halfway toward Mars where it is expected to collect more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian explorations combined. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully fired its six engines for 20 seconds last week to adjust its flight path in anticipation of a March arrival. It will fine-tune its trajectory two more times before it enters orbit around Mars, said Allen Halsell, deputy navigation chief at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Once in orbit, the two-ton spacecraft will join a trio of probes currently flying around Mars.