Introduction The Mars Reconnaissance is the first spacecraft designed from the ground up for aero braking and

is equipped with the most powerful camera ever flown on a planetary exploration. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was launched on August 12, 2005 by an Atlas V launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The transit time to Mars was seven months. After arriving at Mars in March 2006, the MRO orbiter was propulsively inserted into a highly elliptical capture orbit with a period of 35 hours. The orbiter used aero braking techniques to reduce its orbit to near that needed for science observations. MRO carried a rich set of science instruments to Mars and provide global, regional survey, and targeted observations. Mission The MRO mission had the primary objective of placing science orbiter into Mars orbit to perform remote sensing investigations that characterized the surface, subsurface and atmosphere of the planet and will identify potential landing sites for future missions. The MRO payload conducted observations in many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, including ultraviolet and visible imaging, visible to nearinfrared imaging spectrometry, thermal infrared atmospheric profiling, and radar subsurface sounding, at spatial resolutions substantially better than any preceding Mars orbiter. The MRO achieved its science objectives by conducting a program of Global mapping, Regional survey, and Globally distributed targeted science observations for one Mars year. Eight scientific investigations teams were selected

by NASA to fulfill the mission science goals. The mission has provided information about ancient environments, ice-age-scale climate cycles and present-day changes on Mars. The orbiter observes Mars' surface, subsurface and atmosphere in extraordinary detail. The spacecraft's large solar panels and dish antenna have enabled it to transmit more data to Earth 131 terabits and counting, including more than 70,000 images than all other interplanetary missions combined. Nonetheless, many things had to go well for the mission to achieve these milestones. System Description The MRO orbiter consists of two major components, the spacecraft bus and the payload. The total MRO injected mass on the Atlas V 401 is 2180 kg, the allowable dry mass is 1031 kg; the rest of the injected mass ifs for needed fuel. To avoid long-term deep space exposure the solar array and high gain antenna deployed. The propulsion system is fault tolerant to a single main engine out and a short duration computer rest event to ensure safe capture at Mars. MRO also utilizes a monopropellant hydrazine design to avoid the hazards and risks of a bipropellant propulsion system. The antenna system on the orbiter consists of a 3-meter high gain antenna that served as the primary means of communication to and from the orbiter, and the two low-gain antennas purpose was to ensure a reliable telecom link via a low data rate from every orbiter attitude. The telecommunication was use for receiving commands and radiometric data and also transmitted radiometric data, science data, and engineering data back to the earth. The MRO orbiter also consists of three traveling Wave Tube Assemblies, two redundant X-band radiate RF signals at 100 watts and the Ka-band TWTA radiates

at 35 watts. The small deep space transponder is used to modulate and demodulate the RF signals for both X-band and Ka-band and uses two modulation schemes, QPSK and BPSK. The SDST can use uplink signals for coherent 2-way operations, an Ultra-stable Oscillator or its own built-in auxiliary oscillator for one-way operations. The SDST also produce delta-DOR tones, to is used for navigation at both X-band and Ka-band. The propulsion subsystems was used to provide attitude control for the spacecrafts, perform major propulsive maneuvers such as trajectory correction maneuvers and Mars orbit insertion. This propulsion subsystem was pressure regulated during MOI and operated in a blow-down mode for all other mission phases. The command and Data Handling subsystem was used to manage all forms of data on the spacecraft. The space flight computer is a X2000 RAD 750 which provides up to 46 Millions of instruction per second for use by the spacecraft subsystems, and the science and engineering instruments. The Guidance, navigation and control subsystem relied on star trackers, sun sensors, and an inertial measurement Unit to determine its attitude, and on reaction wheels and the reaction control system thrusters to maintain the orientation of the orbiter, and on an on-board ephemeris for targeting of specific sites on the surface. Nevertheless the Electrical Power Distribution subsystem included two solar panels and two Nickel-Hydrogen batteries. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter conducted its science investigations using six science instruments payloads, HiRISE, CRISM, MCS, MARCI, CTX, and SHARAD; also there are two engineering payloads in addition to the mentioned instruments,

ONC and Electra. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is multicolor pushbroom imager. It consists of a 0.5 m aperture reflecting telescope, the largest of any deep space mission, which allows it to take pictures of Mars with resolutions up to 0.3 m/pixel, resolving objects below a meter across. The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) will provide high-resolution hyper spectral, images of areas of areas on Mars in wavelengths from 0.4 to 4.0 micrometers (visible to short-wave infrared) for identifying key mineralogical indicators of water and hydrothermal systems. The Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) explores the structure and aspects of the circulation of the atmosphere. This includes mapping the thermal structure of the atmosphere from the surface to an altitude of 80km, with a vertical resolution of 5km and mapping the seasonal and spatial variability of atmospheric pressure. MCS has extremely low data rates and only is operated continuously over the duration of the mission. The Mars Color Imager, MARCI takes low spatial resolution observations of the atmosphere, provide daily global views of Martian activity, and examine surface features characteristic of the evolution of the Martian climate over time. The Context Camera is a facility instrument that will provide panchromatic context imaging for the targeted investigations and will independently address the MRO science goals. The shallow Radar will be used to the search for ground ice or water and sub-surface structure. SHARAD is a nadir looking radar sounder with down track synthetic aperture capabilities. SHARAD is located on the aft deck of the orbiter and will be deployed once the orbiter is in the primary science orbit. Electra is a UHF telecommunications package that was used to provide a command and

telemetry, or proximity link as well as collecting Doppler data for navigation to the surface and support Mars approach navigation. The Optical Navigation Camera (ONC) is part of a technology demonstration experiment for future Mars missions. The camera will acquire images of Mars and its moons, Phobos and Deimos.