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30th Anniversary of The Planetary Society
  

Space Topics

Mars Global Surveyor


Mars Global Surveyor operated at Mars for more than nine years before falling silent on November 5, 2006. Charged with mapping the planet's surface and atmosphere, Mars Global Surveyor's instruments began the systematic collection of data in March 1999 and completed its objectives on January 31, 2001, producing a topographic map of the entire planet to a resolution of 300 meters. The magnetometer instrument detected for the first time a crustal magnetic field at Mars. Unlike Earth, Mars has no measurable global magnetic field.

The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) onboard has returned more than 212,000 images showing wondrous things, including layered rock deposits that are evidence of ancient large bodies of water; dramatic changes in the south polar cap; gullies that may be evidence for geologically recent liquid water flow on Mars; and the landing sites of Spirit, Opportunity, both Viking landers, and Mars Pathfinder. MOC revealed the 'Face on Mars' made famous by a haunting Viking image to be a not-so-unusual mound formation with a series of images it took from many angles. In May 2005, MOC snapped a picture of Mars Odyssey and Mars Express, the two other orbiters at Mars, to make MGS the first mission to take a picture of other spacecraft orbiting Mars. Its extreme longevity enabled it to catch Mars geology in action, capturing images of newly formed deposits in gullies, and a total of 20 new impact craters splattering Mars during the nine-year mission.

Mars Global Surveyor Facts
Launch date: November 7, 1996
Mars arrival: September 11, 1997
Mapping operations began: February 22, 1999
Mapping operations completed: January 31, 2001
Extended mission: Began February 1, 2001
Loss of contact: November 5, 2006