Once the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reaches its destination, then scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California
will have a new and powerful observer of the Red Planet. Here to answer your questions about this important mission is
Deputy Project Scientist Dr. Sue Smrekar. Thanks so much for joining us today.
I'm happy to be here.
With the launch of this mission so close, what are your thoughts as you see all the hard work of so many people ready to come to fruition?
Well, a number of us have been working on it for at least four or five years, and many have been planning for a lot longer than that.
And we're sort of holding our breath for the last few weeks, getting ready to see that rocket launch. Everyone's poured their energy and
creativity and heart into it, and we really think it's going to be a very exciting part of the whole Mars exploration. So, we can't wait.
I believe we have a video that shows the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it was prepared for the mission. Could you take us through the process?
Sure. Okay, you see the aircraft that carried the spacecraft here from Denver at Lockheed Martin. It was flown on this aircraft here to the Cape.
It's being unloaded from this aircraft slowly, carefully. It's in this huge box. We actually sent the spacecraft in two different boxes.
This one contains the payload and the main part of the spacecraft, and it's being delivered to one of the test facilities here at the Cape.
What they're getting ready to do here is carry out a number of tests on the spacecraft.
It was, had to be disassembled before it could be sent out,
so they have to reassemble it and test to make sure that everything is still working as it was planned.
So here they're putting it on a test ring, and in a minute they're going to look at if the solar arrays and high-gain antenna actually are
working as they planned. This is the high-gain antenna here. It's a huge antenna,
as you can see, almost 10 feet across. And these are our solar arrays,
and there you see those little bolts popping off. They're testing to make sure that when it's deployed after launch, it'll work as they planned.
So this is a last sort of test they do before they certify the spacecraft for launch. And here they're getting ready to unfold them and make
sure that they'll work as planned again. And, of course, this will happen in space where there's zero gravity.
So here they have to take extra measures to make sure that they're simulating that environment.
This gives you a look at how huge the spacecraft is, it's 22 feet as it stands up there,
and it's really a complicated series of tests and, you know, very,
kind of nerve-wracking moving this giant spacecraft around from one test facility to another.
But everything went smoothly. They're putting it here on another test stand,
and they're getting ready to spin it and make sure everything is balanced.
When it's actually put into orbit around Mars, it needs to be very stable and not,
and not be off balance or off center as it goes in towards the planet.
So they're making sure that that's, everything's exactly where it's supposed to be as they spin it around here. And this is the fairing,
the part of the launch vehicle that goes around the spacecraft to protect it while it's being launched. You see the MRO symbol there.
The stage is called encapsulation, and it protects it as it's launched.