After seven months of interplanetary spaceflight, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) successfully reached the red planet Friday to take an in-depth look at the dusty world.
The $450 million spacecraft, aimed at tracking Mars’ watery past and hunting for landing sites to aid future missions, entered orbit at about 4:24 p.m. EST (2124 GMT) today after firing six main engines to slow itself from an 11,000 mile (17,702 kilometer) per hour gait.
“Today was picture perfect,” said James Graf, NASA’s MRO project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a post-orbital arrival mission briefing. "I thought today was a simulation because we came so close to being right on."
Howard Eiesen, MRO's flight system manager at JPL, added jokingly that his fortune cookie from Thursday night - which read 'A Thrilling Time is in your Future' - heralded Friday's success.
"Today we earned our 'O,'" Eisen said in the press briefing. "We are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but we were not orbiting until today."
read the rest of the news article at Space.com (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060310_mro_mars_arrival.html)
Good news. I'm always glad when a space mission goes well.