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UA scientists have been planning with NASA for a mission to Mars since 2001. On Wednesday the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment will launch and probe the red planet, sending back images unlike anything seen by the human eye.
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By Evan Pellegrino
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, August 8, 2005
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A UA mission to probe Mars is scheduled to launch on Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
If everything goes as planned, the mission will provide scientists with "10 times (more information) than any previous Mars mission," said Alfred S. McEwen, principal investigator of the project.
The probe will orbit the red planet and examine its surface.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will include the biggest telescope to ever leave Earth's orbit, McEwen said.
At about half a meter, the telescope and connected camera will provide "gigapixel" quality images, or extremely high-resolution images of Mars.
McEwen's project, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, will capture images of Mars unlike any seen by human eye.
According to McEwen, NASA is very interested in the information about the Martian surface the probe will provide.
HiRISE, built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., will help determine landing sites and rover paths for future missions to the planet.
The probe will have a "meter scale," explained McEwen, along with a spectrometer and radar equipment. The meter scale will show scientists the scale of features on Mars, and will help determine obstacles for future landing missions.
When the probe reaches its destination, McEwen and other UA scientists will work from the HiRISE operations center, called "HiRoc," located on campus.
There, the team will do "observation planning, uplink, downlink, data processing, and instrument monitoring," in communication with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, McEwen said.
All of the images captured by HiRISE will be processed and seen first by UA scientists.
As principal investigator, McEwen is the lead contact to NASA. He proposed the mission in 2001 and was selected by NASA over other similarly proposed missions to explore Mars.
