Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Technology


	+ Mars Home + Rovers Home

		Remote Science Instrumentation
		In-situ Instrumentation

Science Instruments: Remote Science Instrumentation

Technologies for remote science instrumentation enable the collection of Mars data from orbit.

As this mission is a landed mission and not an orbital mission, no technologies were contributed in this area. However, the next mission to launch, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has taken us back into the martian orbit to remotely investigate the red planet like never before.

This artist's concept of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter features the spacecraft against the backdrop of black space. The spacecraft is hovering over the rust-colored red planet, using its SHARAD (Shallow Subsurface Radar) instrument to essentially 'look' beneath the surface of Mars for liquid or frozen water. Opaque circles represent the radar waves.

Artist's concept of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its SHARAD (Shallow Subsurface Radar) instrument, which will seek liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars' crust. SHARAD will probe the subsurface using radar waves using a 15-25 megahertz frequency band in order to get the desired high-depth resolution.