Public Presentation About Mars Obiter's Images and Findings

Upcoming Event November 26, 2008

Public Presentation About Mars Obiter's Images and Findings

Mars scientists will present dramatic images and key findings from NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter at a free evening program in Pasadena on Thursday,
Dec. 4, celebrating completion of the mission's first two-year science phase.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has already collected more data than all other
past and current Mars missions combined. Its findings point to a complex history
of climate change on the Red Planet, both early in its history and in more recent
times.

The orbiter has cameras examining Mars at scales from revealing details the size
of a desk to providing daily weather observations of the entire planet. Other
instruments map minerals on the surface, probe with radar beneath the surface
and monitor the atmosphere.

The public program will being at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 in the von Karman Auditorium at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena. JPL, a
division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate,
Washington.

JPL's Richard Zurek and Suzanne Smrekar, the project scientist and deputy
project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will introduce the evening's
program. Featured presenters will be Roger Phillips of Washington University in
St. Louis, principal investigator for the orbiter's Shallow Subsurface Radar; Scott
Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel,
Md., principal investigator for the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging
Spectrometer for Mars; and Candice Hansen of JPL, deputy principal investigator
for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera.

Some examples of images taken by that high-resolution camera on the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter are shots of an active avalanche
(http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10245), the landing of NASA's
Phoenix spacecraft (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10705); gullies
(http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10001); and tracks of the Opportunity
rover at Victoria Crater (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09692).

Thousands more examples are on the camera team's Web site,
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ .

More information about the mission is available at
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ . Directions to JPL are available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/maps.cfm .

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