Mars Like You've Never Seen It: NASA Marks 15-Years Of Mars Exploration

Apart from being the target planet for top missions by space agencies across the globe, Mars has been a topic of wonder among the astronomers too.?

NASA

Much to their enthusiasm, NASA has now shared images of our neighbouring Red Planet that are nothing less than stellar, in every sense.

Images of Mars shared by the US space agency recently were captured by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The recent tweet marked the 15th anniversary of the orbiter’s launch to Mars on August 12, 2005. The orbiter has been working on studying Mars since then.

NASA/ Twitter

“Beautiful Mars! Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched 15 years ago today to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere, weather, subsurface water, and more. But the mission might best be known for the images sent by its @HiRISE camera,” NASA tweeted. Attached to the same are four images that you can see below.

A history of Mars

NASA/ Twitter

While everyone should be mesmerized with the other-worldly images of Mars, those with a deeper interest in space exploration might disagree with what’s written in the tweet. There are, of course, better reasons to remember the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

After all, the orbiter has spent more than 14 years, 5 months since its insertion in Mars orbit on March 10, 2006. It began to seek out “the history of water on Mars,” a mission objective that can form the stepping stone to analyse the planet for search of life, future human establishments as well as possible terraforming.

NASA/ Twitter

Not like it was the only orbiter to do so. It did, however enabled an “extreme close-up photography of the martian surface.” The result was further to be used by NASA to “analyze minerals, look for subsurface water” and even monitor daily global weather.

Needless to say, the observations have helped NASA figure out specifics of their next missions. The most recent mission that flew out to Mars, for instance, now carries equipment for advanced exploration of the red planet through robotics. NASA Perseverance Rover.

Aboard the Atlas 5 rocket that took off for Mars last month, were a car-sized rover named ‘Perseverance’ and a mini helicopter called 'Ingenuity' for flyby missions.

NASA/ Twitter

Like many other space agencies, NASA is eyeing to send humans to the Martian surface soon. Its Mars 2020 mission is a step up that ladder, as the Perseverance rover will try to “gather knowledge and demonstrate technologies that address the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars.”

All this has been in some way enabled by the Mars Orbiter. And THAT is what it will always be remembered for!