See the 100,000th photo of Mars taken by NASA’s groundbreaking Red Planet orbiter
In a few months, a NASA spacecraft called the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will begin its 20th year of observing the Red Planet from above. And, like most 20-year-olds on Earth, MRO’s film roll is absolutely full.
According to NASAMRO has just taken its 100,000th photo of the Martian surface using its HiRISE camera. In other words, this represents an average of 5,000 photos per year, 417 photos per month, or approximately 14 per day, every day since March 2006.
Studying how the Red Planet changes over time will help demystify the forces that govern it and reveal whether it ever existed. a lush aquatic world like the Earth. Launched from Florida on August 12, 2005 and inserted into Mars’ orbit on March 10, 2006, the MRO will continue its mission to photograph the planet for as long as it can.
Sometimes MRO takes a break from its primary mission of gazing into space. In October, the satellite looked up into the sky take a photo of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed about 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) from the spacecraft – much closer than the comet had arrived at Earth at its closest point on December 19.
Although MRO was not designed to observe small, fast-moving objects at such great distances, it nevertheless provided early confirmation that 3I/ATLAS showed the telltale features of a natural comet, including a small nucleus enveloped in a brilliant coma of gas and dust.
