Jump to content
Join the Alien Search, login or register FREE on Aliens and Space Forum
Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site

NASA Mars Orbiter Learns New Moves After Nearly 20 Years in Space

NASA

By NASA
in NASA

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Publishers
NASA Mentor

NASA

Posted
  • Publishers
Posted

6 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

Artist's concept of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
An antenna sticks out like whiskers from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in this artist’s concept of the spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2006. This antenna is part of SHARAD, a radar that peers below the Martian surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is testing a series of large spacecraft rolls that will help it hunt for water.

After nearly 20 years of operations, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is on a roll, performing a new maneuver to squeeze even more science out of the busy spacecraft as it circles the Red Planet. Engineers have essentially taught the probe to roll over so that it’s nearly upside down. Doing so enables MRO to look deeper underground as it searches for liquid and frozen water, among other things.

The new capability is detailed in a paper recently published in the Planetary Science Journal documenting three “very large rolls,” as the mission calls them, that were performed between 2023 and 2024.

“Not only can you teach an old spacecraft new tricks, you can open up entirely new regions of the subsurface to explore by doing so,” said one of the paper’s authors, Gareth Morgan of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

This animation depicts NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter performing a 120-degree roll that increases the strength of its radar signal by 10 times or more.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The orbiter was originally designed to roll up to 30 degrees in any direction so that it can point its instruments at surface targets, including potential landing sites, impact craters, and more.

“We’re unique in that the entire spacecraft and its software are designed to let us roll all the time,” said Reid Thomas, MRO’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The process for rolling isn’t simple. The spacecraft carries five operating science instruments that have different pointing requirements. To target a precise spot on the surface with one instrument, the orbiter has to roll a particular way, which means the other instruments may have a less-favorable view of Mars during the maneuver.

That’s why each regular roll is planned weeks in advance, with instrument teams negotiating who conducts science and when. Then, an algorithm checks MRO’s position above Mars and automatically commands the orbiter to roll so the appropriate instrument points at the correct spot on the surface. At the same time, the algorithm commands the spacecraft’s solar arrays to rotate and track the Sun and its high-gain antenna to track Earth to maintain power and communications.

Very large rolls, which are 120 degrees, require even more planning to maintain the safety of the spacecraft. The payoff is that the new maneuver enables one particular instrument, called the Shallow Radar (SHARAD), to have a deeper view of Mars than ever before.

e2a-pia26555-sharad-data-120-web.jpg e2b-pia26555-fig-a-sharad-data-28-web.jp
radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA’s MRO
radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA’s MRO
radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA’s MRO
radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA’s MRO

SHARAD’s View of Mars During a ‘Very Large Roll’

These two radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA’s MRO reveal how the spacecraft’s new “very large roll” maneuver produces a stronger signal, providing a brighter, clearer picture of the Martian subsurface. Use the slider to compare the 120-degree roll, left, to the standard 28-degree roll. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Rome/ASI/PSI

Bigger Rolls, Better Science

Designed to peer from about half a mile to a little over a mile (1 to 2 kilometers) belowground, SHARAD allows scientists to distinguish between materials like rock, sand, and ice. The radar was especially useful in determining where ice could be found close enough to the surface that future astronauts might one day be able to access it. Ice will be key for producing rocket propellant for the trip home and is important for learning more about the climate, geology, and potential for life at Mars.

But as great as SHARAD is, the team knew it could be even better.

To give cameras like the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) prime viewing at the front of MRO, SHARAD’s two antenna segments were mounted at the back of the orbiter. While this setup helps the cameras, it also means that radio signals SHARAD pings onto the surface below encounter parts of the spacecraft, interfering with the signals and resulting in images that are less clear.

“The SHARAD instrument was designed for the near-subsurface, and there are select regions of Mars that are just out of reach for us,” said Morgan, a co-investigator on the SHARAD team. “There is a lot to be gained by taking a closer look at those regions.”

In 2023, the team decided to try developing 120-degree very large rolls to provide the radio waves an unobstructed path to the surface. What they found is that the maneuver can strengthen the radar signal by 10 times or more, offering a much clearer picture of the Martian underground.

But the roll is so large that the spacecraft’s communications antenna is not pointed at Earth, and its solar arrays aren’t able to track the Sun.

“The very large rolls require a special analysis to make sure we’ll have enough power in our batteries to safely do the roll,” Thomas said.

Given the time involved, the mission limits itself to one or two very large rolls a year. But engineers hope to use them more often by streamlining the process.

Learning to Roll With It

While SHARAD scientists are benefiting from these new moves, the team working with another MRO instrument, the Mars Climate Sounder, is making the most of MRO’s standard roll capability. 

The JPL-built instrument is a radiometer that serves as one of the most detailed sources available of information on Mars’ atmosphere. Measuring subtle changes in temperature over the course of many seasons, Mars Climate Sounder reveals the inner workings of dust storms and cloud formation. Dust and wind are important to understand: They are constantly reshaping the Martian surface, with wind-borne dust blanketing solar panels and posing a health risk for future astronauts.

Mars Climate Sounder was designed to pivot on a gimbal so that it can get views of the Martian horizon and surface. It also provides views of space, which scientists use to calibrate the instrument. But in 2024, the aging gimbal became unreliable. Now Mars Climate Sounder relies on MRO’s standard rolls.

“Rolling used to restrict our science,” said Mars Climate Sounder’s interim principal investigator, Armin Kleinboehl of JPL, “but we’ve incorporated it into our routine planning, both for surface views and calibration.”

More About MRO

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages MRO for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of its Mars Exploration Program portfolio. The SHARAD instrument was provided by the Italian Space Agency. Its operations are led by Sapienza University of Rome, and its data is analyzed by a joint U.S.-Italian science team. The Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, leads U.S. involvement in SHARAD. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built MRO and supports its operations.

For more information, visit:

science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter

News Media Contacts

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

2025-084

Share

Details

Last Updated
Jun 26, 2025

Related Terms

Explore More

1-john-casani-8-4-77-cropped.jpg?w=227
6 min read

John Casani, Former Manager of Multiple NASA Missions, Dies

Article 2 days ago
1-pia26575-fcam-abrade-1531.jpg?w=300
6 min read

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scours Mars for Science

Article 2 days ago
e2-pia26558-curiosity-views-a-fractured-
5 min read

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Starts Unpacking Boxwork Formations

Article 4 days ago
Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

topic-card-sample-1.jpg

Humans in Space

topic-card-sample-2.jpg

Climate Change

topic-card-sample-3.jpg

Solar System

topic-card-sample-4.jpg

View the full article

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Similar Topics

    • NASA
      NASA Aircraft, Sensor Technology, Aid in Texas Flood Recovery Efforts
      By NASA
      3 min read
      Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
      The high-altitude WB-57 aircraft departed July 8, 2025, from Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, headed to the Texas Hill Country. The aircraft will use the DyNAMITE (Day/Night Airborne Motion Imager for Terrestrial Environments) sensor system to take video mosaics of the area to assist with the emergency response effort. Photo Credit: NASA/Morgan Gridley In response to recent flooding near Kerrville, Texas, NASA deployed two aircraft to assist state and local authorities in ongoing recovery operations.

      The aircraft are part of the response from NASA’s Disasters Response Coordination System, which is activated to support emergency response for the flooding and is working closely with the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the humanitarian groups Save the Children and GiveDirectly.

      Persistent cloud-cover has made it difficult to obtain clear satellite imagery, so the Disasters Program coordinated with NASA’s Airborne Science Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston to conduct a series of flights to gather observations of the impacted regions. NASA is sharing these data directly with emergency response teams to inform their search and rescue efforts and aid decision-making and resource allocation.

      The high-altitude WB-57 aircraft operated by NASA Johnson departed from Ellington Field on July 8 to conduct aerial surveys. The aircraft is equipped with the DyNAMITE (Day/Night Airborne Motion Imager for Terrestrial Environments) sensor.

      The DyNAMITE sensor views the Guadalupe River[KA1] [RC2]  and several miles of the surrounding area, providing high-resolution imagery critical to assessing damage and supporting coordination of ground-based recovery efforts. This system enables real-time collection and analysis of data, enhancing situational awareness and accelerating emergency response times.

      In addition, the agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is flying out of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, aboard a Gulfstream III. Managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the UAVSAR team is planning to collect observations over the Guadalupe, San Gabriel, and Colorado river basins Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Because UAVSAR can penetrate vegetation to spot water that optical sensors are unable to detect, the team’s goal is to characterize the extent of flooding to help with understanding the amount of damage within communities.

      Flights are being coordinated with FEMA, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and local responders to ensure data is quickly delivered to those making decisions on the ground. Imagery collected will be sent to NASA’s Disaster Response Coordination System.

      Additionally, the Disasters Program, which is part of NASA’s Earth Science Division, is working to produce maps and data to assess the location and severity of flooding in the region and damage to buildings and infrastructure. These data are being shared on the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal as they become available.

      Read More Share
      Details
      Last Updated Jul 09, 2025 Related Terms
      Earth Applied Sciences Program Earth Science Division Ellington Field Floods General Jet Propulsion Laboratory Johnson Space Center NASA Aircraft NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate WB-57 Explore More
      2 min read Polar Tourists Give Positive Reviews to NASA Citizen Science in Antarctica
      Citizen science projects result in an overwhelmingly positive impact on the polar tourism experience. That’s…
      Article 6 hours ago 3 min read Aaisha Ali: From Marine Biology to the Artemis Control Room 
      Article 2 days ago 4 min read NASA Mission Monitoring Air Quality from Space Extended 
      Article 6 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
      Missions
      Humans in Space
      Climate Change
      Solar System
      View the full article
    • NASA
      Smarter Searching: NASA AI Makes Science Data Easier to Find
      By NASA
      6 min read
      Smarter Searching: NASA AI Makes Science Data Easier to Find
      Image snapshot taken from NASA Worldview of NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission on March 15, 2025 showing heavy rain across the southeastern U.S. with an overlay of the GCMD Keyword Recommender for Earth Science, Atmosphere, Precipitation, Droplet Size. NASA Worldview Imagine shopping for a new pair of running shoes online. If each seller described them differently—one calling them “sneakers,” another “trainers,” and someone else “footwear for exercise”—you’d quickly feel lost in a sea of mismatched terminology. Fortunately, most online stores use standardized categories and filters, so you can click through a simple path: Women’s > Shoes > Running Shoes—and quickly find what you need.
      Now, scale that problem to scientific research. Instead of sneakers, think “aerosol optical depth” or “sea surface temperature.” Instead of a handful of retailers, it is thousands of researchers, instruments, and data providers. Without a common language for describing data, finding relevant Earth science datasets would be like trying to locate a needle in a haystack, blindfolded.
      That’s why NASA created the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD), a standardized vocabulary that helps scientists tag their datasets in a consistent and searchable way. But as science evolves, so does the challenge of keeping metadata organized and discoverable. 
      To meet that challenge, NASA’s Office of Data Science and Informatics (ODSI) at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, developed the GCMD Keyword Recommender (GKR): a smart tool designed to help data providers and curators assign the right keywords, automatically.
      Smarter Tagging, Accelerated Discovery
      The upgraded GKR model isn’t just a technical improvement; it’s a leap forward in how we organize and access scientific knowledge. By automatically recommending precise, standardized keywords, the model reduces the burden on human curators while ensuring metadata quality remains high. This makes it easier for researchers, students, and the public to find exactly the datasets they need.
      It also sets the stage for broader applications. The techniques used in GKR, like applying focal loss to rare-label classification problems and adapting pre-trained transformers to specialized domains, can benefit fields well beyond Earth science.
      Metadata Matchmaker
      The newly upgraded GKR model tackles a massive challenge in information science known as extreme multi-label classification. That’s a mouthful, but the concept is straightforward: Instead of predicting just one label, the model must choose many, sometimes dozens, from a set of thousands. Each dataset may need to be tagged with multiple, nuanced descriptors pulled from a controlled vocabulary.
      Think of it like trying to identify all the animals in a photograph. If there’s just a dog, it’s easy. But if there’s a dog, a bird, a raccoon hiding behind a bush, and a unicorn that only shows up in 0.1% of your training photos, the task becomes far more difficult. That’s what GKR is up against: tagging complex datasets with precision, even when examples of some keywords are scarce.
      And the problem is only growing. The new version of GKR now considers more than 3,200 keywords, up from about 430 in its earlier iteration. That’s a sevenfold increase in vocabulary complexity, and a major leap in what the model needs to learn and predict.
      To handle this scale, the GKR team didn’t just add more data; they built a more capable model from the ground up. At the heart of the upgrade is INDUS, an advanced language model trained on a staggering 66 billion words drawn from scientific literature across disciplines—Earth science, biological sciences, astronomy, and more.
      NASA ODSI’s GCMD Keyword Recommender AI model automatically tags scientific datasets with the help of INDUS, a large language model trained on NASA scientific publications across the disciplines of astrophysics, biological and physical sciences, Earth science, heliophysics, and planetary science. NASA “We’re at the frontier of cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning for science,” said Sajil Awale, a member of the NASA ODSI AI team at MSFC. “This problem domain is interesting, and challenging, because it’s an extreme classification problem where the model needs to differentiate even very similar keywords/tags based on small variations of context. It’s exciting to see how we have leveraged INDUS to build this GKR model because it is designed and trained for scientific domains. There are opportunities to improve INDUS for future uses.”
      This means that the new GKR isn’t just guessing based on word similarities; it understands the context in which keywords appear. It’s the difference between a model knowing that “precipitation” might relate to weather versus recognizing when it means a climate variable in satellite data.
      And while the older model was trained on only 2,000 metadata records, the new version had access to a much richer dataset of more than 43,000 records from NASA’s Common Metadata Repository. That increased exposure helps the model make more accurate predictions.
      The Common Metadata Repository is the backend behind the following data search and discovery services:
      Earthdata Search International Data Network Learning to Love Rare Words
      One of the biggest hurdles in a task like this is class imbalance. Some keywords appear frequently; others might show up just a handful of times. Traditional machine learning approaches, like cross-entropy loss, which was used initially to train the model, tend to favor the easy, common labels, and neglect the rare ones.
      To solve this, NASA’s team turned to focal loss, a strategy that reduces the model’s attention to obvious examples and shifts focus toward the harder, underrepresented cases. 
      The result? A model that performs better across the board, especially on the keywords that matter most to specialists searching for niche datasets.
      From Metadata to Mission
      Ultimately, science depends not only on collecting data, but on making that data usable and discoverable. The updated GKR tool is a quiet but critical part of that mission. By bringing powerful AI to the task of metadata tagging, it helps ensure that the flood of Earth observation data pouring in from satellites and instruments around the globe doesn’t get lost in translation.
      In a world awash with data, tools like GKR help researchers find the signal in the noise and turn information into insight.
      Beyond powering GKR, the INDUS large language model is also enabling innovation across other NASA SMD projects. For example, INDUS supports the Science Discovery Engine by helping automate metadata curation and improving the relevancy ranking of search results.The diverse applications reflect INDUS’s growing role as a foundational AI capability for SMD.
      The INDUS large language model is funded by the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Office of the Chief Science Data Officer advances scientific discovery through innovative applications and partnerships in data science, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence.
      Share








      Details
      Last Updated Jul 09, 2025 Related Terms
      Science & Research Artificial Intelligence (AI) Explore More
      2 min read Polar Tourists Give Positive Reviews to NASA Citizen Science in Antarctica


      Article


      6 hours ago
      2 min read Hubble Observations Give “Missing” Globular Cluster Time to Shine


      Article


      6 days ago
      5 min read How NASA’s SPHEREx Mission Will Share Its All-Sky Map With the World 


      Article


      7 days ago
      Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
      Missions



      Humans in Space



      Climate Change



      Solar System


      View the full article
    • NASA
      Anatomy of a Space Shuttle
      By NASA
      This illustration shows the parts of a space shuttle orbiter. About the same size and weight as a DC-9 aircraft, the orbiter contains the pressurized crew compartment (which can normally carry up to seven crew members), the cargo bay, and the three main engines mounted on its aft end.NASA This 2001 illustration labels important parts of a space shuttle orbiter. The orbiter was the heart and brains of the space shuttle and served as the crew transport vehicle that carried astronauts to and from space. The space shuttle was comprised of the orbiter, the main engines, the external tank, and the solid rocket boosters. The space shuttle was the world’s first reusable spacecraft and the first spacecraft in history that could carry large satellites both to and from orbit.
      Image credit: NASA
      View the full article
    • NASA
      “Hubble at 35 Years” Symposium Explores Insights from Hubble’s Past
      By NASA
      As Hubble marks three and a half decades of scientific breakthroughs and technical resilience, the “Hubble at 35 Years” symposium offers a platform to reflect on the mission’s historical, operational, and scientific legacy. Hubble’s trajectory—from early challenges to becoming a symbol of American scientific ingenuity—presents valuable lessons in innovation, collaboration, and crisis response. Bringing together scientists, engineers, and historians at NASA Headquarters ensures that this legacy informs current and future mission planning, including operations for the James Webb Space Telescope, Roman Space Telescope, and other next-generation observatories. The symposium not only honors Hubble’s transformative contributions but also reinforces NASA’s commitment to learning from the past to shape a more effective and ambitious future for space science.
      Hubble at 35 Years
      Lessons Learned in Scientific Discovery and NASA Flagship Mission Operations
      October 16–17, 2025
      James Webb Auditorium, NASA HQ, Washington, D.C.
      The giant Hubble Space Telescope (HST) can be seen as it is suspended in space by Discovery’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) following the deployment of part of its solar panels and antennae on April 25, 1990.NASA The story of the Hubble Space Telescope confirms its place as the most transformative and significant astronomical observatory in history. Once called “the eighth wonder of the world” by a former NASA administrator, Hubble’s development since its genesis in the early 1970s and its launch, repair, and ultimate impact since 1990 provide ample opportunity to apply insights from its legacy. Scientists and engineers associated with groundbreaking discoveries have always operated within contexts shaped by forces including the government, private industry, the military, and the public at large. The purpose of this symposium is to explore the insights from Hubble’s past and draw connections that can inform the development of mission work today and for the future.
      Contact the Organizer Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
      Hubble’s 35th Anniversary
      Universe
      Humans In Space
      NASA History

      View the full article
    • NASA
      NASA, International Astronauts Answer Questions from Florida Students
      By NASA
      The seven-member Expedition 73 crew poses for a portrait inside the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module.Credit: NASA Students in Big Pine Key, Florida, will have the chance to have NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station answer their prerecorded questions.
      At 10:05 a.m. EDT on Monday, July 14, NASA astronaut Nicole Ayers and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi will answer questions submitted by students.
      Watch the 20-minute Earth-to-space call on NASA STEM’s YouTube Channel.
      The event is hosted by the Seacamp Association of Big Pine Key, Florida, which provides immersive science lessons for youth interested in discovering the sea. The event will be attended by local Monroe County students, as well as national and international campers ages 10-17 years old. The goal of the event is to help students make connections between astronauts training in space and scientists working in the sea.  
      Media interested in covering the event must RSVP by 5 p.m. EDT, Friday, July 11, to Judy Gregoire at: 305-872-2331 or email at: info@seacamp.org.
      For nearly 25 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network.
      Important research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lay the groundwork for other agency missions. As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars; inspiring Golden Age explorers and ensuring the United States continues to lead in space exploration and discovery.
      See videos of astronauts aboard the space station at:
      https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation
      -end-
      Gerelle Dodson
      Headquarters, Washington
      202-358-1600
      gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov
      Sandra Jones
      Johnson Space Center, Houston
      281-483-5111
      sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
      Share
      Details
      Last Updated Jul 09, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
      Humans in Space In-flight Education Downlinks International Space Station (ISS) Johnson Space Center Learning Resources NASA Headquarters View the full article

  • Check out these Videos

×
×
  • Create New...