Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

After Delay, A Launch
MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) has been launched. here's the article in whole:

Delayed by three days for bad weather and a last-minute software glitch, a giant two-ton spacecraft was bound for Mars today carrying telescopes, cameras and an array of instruments designed to examine the planet from orbit in far closer detail than any Mars flight has ever achieved before.

The spacecraft rose from its Cape Canaveral launch pad early in the morning aboard an Atlas V rocket and headed on a six-month voyage toward its target 72 million miles away.

"It couldn't have gone any smoother," said launch manager Charles Dovale, and James Garvin, NASA's chief scientist, exclaimed. "I'm bouncing off the walls. We're ecstatic."

Flying over both Martian poles at an average altitude of only 190 miles, the new spacecraft will cover Mars' entire surface for nearly two years during its $720 million mission, pinpointing features as small as a desk top and probing nearly half a mile deep beneath the planet's shifting sands with specialized Italian-built radar.

No planet aside from Earth has undergone such intense scientific scrutiny as Mars. It is a full 40 years since, in the early days of the space age, America sent the world's first Mariner mission swinging by the red planet to begin an unceasing quest for understanding a planet that just might prove to be one of the solar system's earliest abodes for life.

Now, with two weather-beaten but still lively robot rovers continuing their explorations across the Martian surface more than a full year beyond their expected lifetime, and with two other craft circling high above the planet on different paths, the fourth planet from the sun is about to be probed by the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Like all the American and European missions before it, this spacecraft, known simply as MRO, is assigned, as NASA scientists say, to "follow the water." It will hunt for evidence that the single-most critical ingredient for life as we know it exists or once existed abundantly somewhere amid the stony plains, the deep canyons, the crater beds, the layered rocks, the icy polar caps and the rolling red hills of the ever-beckoning planet.

The orbiting spacecraft's uniquely high-resolution camera will also seek safe landing sites for future Mars missions, some already scheduled and others still in the planning stages: For example, MRO will scout out the edges of the planet's polar caps for the 2007 Phoenix lander whose robotic shovel will dig beneath the permafrost. The spacecraft will seek another site for a full-scale roving analytical laboratory scheduled for launch in 2009 in search of hospitable habitats for life.

With NASA's Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's Mars Express already in orbit around the planet, MRO will add a third communication link to the array data being relayed back to Earth from the two exploration vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity. The Spirit and Opportunity have been traversing the planet's landscape since their arrival in January of last year.

Among the spacecraft's six instruments are three cameras, one more powerful than any ever sent to explore another planet, according to project scientist Richard Zurek, who told reporters recently that "higher resolution is a major driver for this mission."

Another instrument is an imaging spectrometer for identifying key minerals in patches of terrain as small as a swimming pool -- minerals that could reveal whether they were originally formed in water eons ago.

Two other instruments will look both downward and horizontally to measure variations of water vapor, dust and temperatures in the Martian atmosphere and track changes in the planet's weather and wind patterns.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is many things," said Zurek. "It's a weather satellite, it's a geologic surveyor, and it's a pathfinder for future missions."

Richard Hoagland's blog has an article on it too.

Also unlike any previous unmanned Mars missions, not only is the on-board imaging capability of MRO unprecedented ... but there is also an unprecedented political framework created specifically for this Mission ... to solicit public images during the nominal orbital surveys of this spacecraft! Needless to say, we will be thoroughly testing this unique aspect of the MRO Mission in the months and years ahead ....

What makes this policy position of the MRO Mission so challenging and tantalazing is that, for the first time in the history of the NASA Program, the American People will have a legal framework to challenge any NASA or Principle Investigator, to acquire a specificly requested image! And, subsequently, to challenge the scientific and imaging quality of any images so acquired ... that are "mysteriously" degraded.

This already-in-place political and scientific infrastructure guarantees that "we the People" will FINALLY get to really look at Mars ... or, the full weight of the American legal and media systems will descend on a NASA committment not fulfilled ... asking the embarrassing question "why not!?"

Obviously, Cydonia will be high on our own Enterprise initial target list; knowing what we know about Cydonia ... MRO's unique HiRISE camera (to say nothing of its other instruments' multi-spectral capabilities ...) will finally be able to resolve (literally) the overwhelmingly important question: are there intelligently-designed artifacts on Mars?!

Make of that what you will. The reference to getting more info about Cydonia is where I get cold feet. :)