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Once the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reaches its destination, then scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California

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will have a new and powerful observer of the Red Planet. Here to answer your questions about this important mission is

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Deputy Project Scientist Dr. Sue Smrekar. Thanks so much for joining us today.

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I'm happy to be here.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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It's being unloaded from this aircraft slowly, carefully. It's in this huge box. We actually sent the spacecraft in two different boxes.

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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.

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What they're getting ready to do here is carry out a number of tests on the spacecraft.

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It was, had to be disassembled before it could be sent out,

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so they have to reassemble it and test to make sure that everything is still working as it was planned.

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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

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working as they planned. This is the high-gain antenna here. It's a huge antenna,

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as you can see, almost 10 feet across. And these are our solar arrays,

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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.

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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

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sure that they'll work as planned again. And, of course, this will happen in space where there's zero gravity.

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So here they have to take extra measures to make sure that they're simulating that environment.

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This gives you a look at how huge the spacecraft is, it's 22 feet as it stands up there,

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and it's really a complicated series of tests and, you know, very,

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kind of nerve-wracking moving this giant spacecraft around from one test facility to another.

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But everything went smoothly. They're putting it here on another test stand,

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and they're getting ready to spin it and make sure everything is balanced.

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When it's actually put into orbit around Mars, it needs to be very stable and not,

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and not be off balance or off center as it goes in towards the planet.

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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,

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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.

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The stage is called encapsulation, and it protects it as it's launched.

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