The following table is a list of Mars orbiters, consisting of space probes which were launched from Earth and are currently orbiting Mars. As of November 2015, there are thirteen known artificial satellites in Mars' orbit, five of which are actively collecting data.
History
20th century
The Soviets' Mars program and NASA's Mariner program became the two first successful space programs that intended to exploreMars through orbiters. Mars 2, Mars 3 and Mariner 9 were all launched into space in May 1971, and all entered Mars’ orbit that same year. NASA's Mariner 9 reached the planet's orbit first on November 14, narrowly beating the Soviet's spacecraft amid the space race, and subsequently became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
Contact with all eight Mars orbiters launched during the 20th century has been lost. NASA's four spacecraft are conjectured to remain in Mars' orbit. Mariner 9, Viking 1 and Viking 2 are expected to lower down into the Martian atmosphere by 2022 and either burn up or crash into the planet's surface.Mars Global Surveyor is expected to crash onto the surface of the planet by 2047. The fate of the Soviet's three Mars program orbiters and Phobos 2 remains unclear, but they are still presumed to be in orbit.
2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraftorbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life has ever existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation future astronauts on Mars might experience. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory, and the Phoenix lander to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Odyssey was launched April 7, 2001 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and reached Mars orbit on October 24, 2001, at 02:30 UTC (October 23, 19:30 PDT, 22:30 EDT). It is currently in a polar orbit around Mars with an altitude of about 3,800km or 2,400 miles.
The Mars 2022 orbiter is a concept study by NASA to develop a Marscommunications satellite with a modest mapping capability payload, and propelled by a solar electric ion thruster.
The orbiter is proposed to be launched in September 2022 to link ground controllers with rovers and landers and extend mapping capabilities expected to be lost when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and 2001 Mars Odyssey stop functioning.
The orbiter is conceptually similar to the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, canceled in 2005, and could be a technology precursor for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to Mars. Robert Lock is leading the concept studies for the 2022 orbiter.
Concern in NASA is that the currently used relay satellites, 2001 Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, may stop functioning, resulting in the need to press the MAVEN science orbiter into use as a backup telecommunications relay. However, the highly elliptical orbit of MAVEN will limit its usefulness as a relay for surface operations.
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In October, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) took images showing InSight’s retired lander, highlighting the accumulation of dust on its solar panels.
