NAIF ID 499

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System after Mercury. Mars carries a name of the Roman god of war, and is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance that is distinctive among the astronomical bodies visible to the naked eye. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

Mars

SPICE-corrected image locations and searching capabilities using a navigable map, user selectable image constraints, bulk-download and image processing using POW

Planetary Image Locator Tool

PDS Image Atlas

Explore planetary data from NASA Mars and lunar landed missions

Analyst's Notebook

Cross-mission and cross-instrument searches for images and spectra from Cassini, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, New Horizons, and the Hubble Space Telescope

Outer Planets Unified Search

Text-based and an interactive map-based search interface for finding and downloading desired orbital observations

Orbital Data Explorer

The Rosetta mission was launched on March 2, 2004. It was to do a detailed study of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It was the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, and to have a lander on a comet.

INTERNATIONAL ROSETTA MISSION

Mars Odyssey was designed to investigate the Martian environment, providing key information on its surface and the radiation hazards future explorers might face. The goal was to map the chemical and mineralogical makeup of Mars as a step to detecting evidence of past or present water and volcanic activity on Mars. The spacecraft also was designed to act as a relay for future landers and did so for the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the Mars Science Laboratory, and the Phoenix lander.Still in orbit around Mars, 2001 Mars Odyssey holds the record for the longest continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth.

2001 MARS ODYSSEY

On November 14, 1971, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Six experiments were carried as part of the science payload: television, ultraviolet spectrometer, infrared spectroscopy, infrared radiometry, S-band occultation and celestial mechanics. Two experiments (S-band occultation and celestial mechanics) utilized the radio telemetry subsystem to derive data; the other required specially developed instruments, mounted, and boresighted to each other, on the spacecraft's scan platform. Pre-launch mission planning encompassed two separate, but complementary, missions. The orbit of each spacecraft was optimized to match the corresponding objective. The mapping mission was designed with an Earth-synchronous orbit (about a 12-hr periods) to maximize antenna utilization, or communications efficiency. For maximum surveillance of an area, it was designed with a steep inclination (80 degrees) to the equatorial plane of Mars. The dynamic objective dictated a Mars-synchronous (or sub-synchronous) orbit and a lower (50 degree) inclination for closer observations of specific areas. The plans for the two missions were in detailed stages of development on May 9, 1971 when Mariner 8 was lost because of guidance difficulties in the second stage of the launch vehicle. It was determined that an orbit for a single-spacecraft mission could be developed to meet all basic mission and specific science objectives. A single-spacecraft plan, involving an inclination of 65 degrees, a period of about 12 hours, a periapsis altitude of 1350 Km, and an arrival date of November 14, 1971, was evaluated and formalized in 2 weeks.

MARINER71

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission consisted of two spacecraft, MER-2 hardware which included the Spirit rover, and MER-1 hardware, which included the Opportunity rover.  Spirit was launched June 10, 2003, on a Delta II 7925 launch vehicle.  Opportunity followed 3 weeks later, launching July 7, 2003 on a Delta II 7925 Heavy vehicle.

MARS EXPLORATION ROVER

Mars Express was launched on June 2, 2003. The mission had an orbiter and a lander. The lander wasn't able to fully deploy once it landed. The orbiter studies the atmosphere of Mars and maps the surface.

MARS EXPRESS

Mars Observer was launched September 25, 1992 from Cape Canaveral on a Titan III built by Martin Marietta Corporation, with an upper Transfer Orbit Stage from Orbital Sciences Corporation. On August 21, 1993, flight controllers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft when an expected transmission that was part of the pre-Mars-Orbit-Insertion sequence failed to occur. Subsequent attempts to re-establish communication with the spacecraft proved unsuccessful. After the 11-month transit the spacecraft was to be injected into an elliptical orbit around Mars with periapsis near the north pole. The orbit would then be adjusted through a series of maneuvers to a near-circular, sun-synchronous (2 am/pm), low altitude, near-polar orbit. Due to the non-uniformity of the gravity field, the altitude was to vary from 376 km near the south pole to 430 km near the north pole. During the Martian year in this mapping orbit the instruments were to acquire data in a systematic program of global mapping. At the end of the mission the spacecraft could have been boosted to a permanent quarantine orbit. The Mars orbit insertion (MOI) period was to end one month before solar conjunction and the beginning of the dust storm period. The playback data rate for a 10-hour link would vary by a factor of 4 with Earth-Mars distance during the mission. The continuous data rate to the tape recorders was about one fifth the playback rate for a 10-hour link to a 34 m NASA Deep Space Network tracking station. The normal sequence of collecting scientific data would be to record continuously for 24 hours and then to play the data back in one 10-hour link. The mapping orbit would be a 117-minute orbit with a 7-day repeat cycle. As a result, the planet would be repeatedly mapped in 26-day cycles with a 58.6 km nominal path separation. Orbit trim adjustments would make it possible to obtain uniform coverage during the course of the mission with an ultimate spacing of ground tracks at the equator or 3.1 km. The Mars Observer spacecraft provided a three-axis stabilized, nadir-oriented platform for the continuous observations of Mars by the science instruments. The spacecraft was built by the General Electric Astro-Space Division. The Gamma Ray Spectrometer and Magnetometer sensor assemblies were mounted on individual booms on the spacecraft. All other instruments were rigidly mounted to the spacecraft structure. No movable scan platform was provided; the spacecraft was to be continuously nadir pointed, rotating at the orbital rate. Those instruments that required scanning or multiple fields of view had internal scanning mechanisms.

MARS OBSERVER

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 12 August 2005. After a five-month cruise and a two-month approach to Mars, MRO entered Mars' orbit on 10 March 2006. The 255 x 320 km Primary Science Orbit (PSO) was a near-polar orbit with periapsis frozen over the South Pole. The Primary Science Phase of the mission began after solar conjunction and after turn-on and checkout of the science instruments in the Primary Science Orbit. The science investigations were functionally divided into daily global mapping and profiling, regional survey, and globally distributed targeting investigations. It is mission is now to be the communication and navigation system for landers and rover probes.

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER

Development of the Mars Science Laboratory project began in 2003.  On November 26 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory mission launched a spacecraft on a trajectory to Mars, and on August 6, 2012 (UTC), it landed a mobile science vehicle named Curiosity at a landing site in Gale Crater.  During the trip to Mars, instrument health checks were performed and the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument collected science data.  For the primary mission on the surface of Mars (ending September 28, 2014), the rover explored the landing site and gathered imaging, spectroscopy, composition data, and other measurements for selected Martian soils, rocks, and the atmosphere. These data will allow the science team to quantitatively assess the habitability and environmental history.  The prime mission's science objectives were to assess the biological potential of the landing site, characterize the geology of the landing region, investigate planetary processes that influence habitability, and characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation.  The first extended mission retains all of the prime mission's objectives and will also strive to: identify and quantitatively assess the subset of habitable environments that are also capable of preserving organic compounds, and explore and characterize major environmental transitions recorded in the geology of the foothills of Mt. Sharp and adjacent plains.

MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY

The Dawn mission launched in Sept. 2007 to rendezvous and orbit the asteroids 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres. Vesta orbit operations took place from July 2011 to Sept. 2012, and Ceres orbit operations from March 2015 to Oct. 2018.  The scientific objectives of the mission were to characterize the asteroids' internal structure, density, shape, size, composition and mass and to return data on surface morphology, cratering, and magnetism.

DAWN MISSION TO VESTA AND CERES

Deep Impact EPOXI is the compilation of the two extended missions for the Deep Impact spacecraft. The first is called Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh). As part of the DIXI mission, the spacecraft flew by comet Hartley 2. As part of the EPOCh mission, the spacecraft used the larger of its two telescopes to find extrasolar planets using the transit method.

EPOXI

The Hubble Space Telescope is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to operate a long-lived space-based observatory for the benefit of the international astronomical community. HST is an observatory first dreamt of in the 1940s, designed and built in the 1970s and 80s, and operational only in the 1990s. Since its preliminary inception, HST was designed to be a different type of mission for NASA. A permanent space-based observatory. To accomplish this goal and protect the spacecraft against instrument and equipment failures, NASA had always planned on regular servicing missions. Hubble has special grapple fixtures, 76 handholds, and stabilized in all three axes. HST is a 2.4-meter reflecting telescope which was deployed in low-Earth orbit (600 kilometers) by the crew of the space shuttle Discovery (STS-31) on 25 April 1990.

This mission has moved to urn:esa:psa:context:investigation:mission.international_rosetta_mission

The mission was designed to have two spacecraft encounter Mars within a 5 day period, with TV images sent to Earth. Mariner 6 was targeted for a nearly equatorial flyby, with Mariner 7 taking a southerly route to enhance viewing of the south polar cap.

MARINER69

The Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which operated on Mars for more than nine years, was designed to study the composition of Mars, map its topography and monitor weather patterns. The orbiter made a number of discoveries about the Red Planet, including evidence of liquid water at or near the Martian surface. 

Observations from the Mars Global Surveyor, especially its identifications of water-related minerals, were used to determine drive routes for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2010.

MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR

The Mars Pathfinder mission, designed to demonstrate a low-cost method for delivering a set of science instruments to the Red Planet, was the first wheeled vehicle to be used on any other planet in the solar system and served as the foundation for the Mars rovers of today. 

The mission landed a rover -- Sojourner -- on the surface of Mars using an air bag landing system and innovative petal design, which have been used since in various incarnations to land other rovers on the Red Planet. Sojourner spent 83 days of a planned seven-day mission exploring the Martian terrain, snapping photographs and taking chemical, atmospheric and other measurements

MARS PATHFINDER

The Phobos 2 was launched on July 12, 1988. It was designed to study the satellites of Mars. It had two landers with it. The spacecraft was able to take images of Phobos and measurements of the Marian atmosphere before its signal was lost.

PHOBOS 2

The Phoenix Mission was the first Scout class mission. It consisted of a single lander with associated instrumentation. Phoenix was launched on August 4, 2007 and landed on the northern plains of Mars (68.22 degrees N, 234.25 degrees East Areocentric) on May 25, 2008. The Lander operated until November 2, 2008, performing on the Martian surface for 152 sols (sols are Martian days, 1 sol equaling 24.66 hours). The Surface Phase constituted the primary and extended missions, and focused on testing the hypothesis that water ice exists beneath a thin soil cover, evaluating evidence for habitability zones, and monitoring weather during the northern summer. Hence, inferring the presence of water and its interaction with the Martian soil was of crucial importance.

PHOENIX

The Viking mission to Mars consisted of four spacecraft: the two orbiters VO1 and VO2, and two landers VL1 and VL2. During cruise to Mars, the landers were attached to the orbiters; the combined spacecraft were then known as Viking 1 and 2. The role of the orbiters was to transport the landers to Mars, to carry reconnaissance instruments for certifying the landing sites, to act as relay stations for lander data, and to perform their own scientific investigations. The initial orbit periapses were placed over the candidate landing sites to allow for maximum viewing resolution and relay of the lander data. After the primary lander missions were completed, the orbiters' orbits were allowed to drift so that the entire planetary surface could be systematically mapped by the three remote sensing experiments. The Viking 1 spacecraft was launched August 20, 1975, and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. Lander 1 was deployed to the Mars surface on July 20, 1976. The VO1 orbital inclination of 38-39 degrees was chosen to optimize communication with VL1. Viking 2 was launched September 9, 1975 and arrived at Mars August 7, 1976. VL2 landed on September 3, 1976, at a more northerly site than VL1. The VO2 orbit was correspondingly more inclined than VO1; initially 55 degrees, it was later adjusted to 80 degrees, providing particularly good coverage of polar regions. The areocentric locations of VL1 and VL2 have since been determined to be (22.270N, 48.264W) and (47.669N, 226.032W), respectively.

VIKING

The InSight mission will place a lander on Mars that will deploy a seismometer and a heat-flow probe, along with cameras, a magnetometer, a meteorology experiment, and a radio science experiment.

Mars Information Page

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Additional data related to this mission/target