The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) was one of five instruments on board the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, which operated in Mars orbit from September 1997 to November 2006. However, the MOLA instrument transmitted altimetry data only until June, 2001. The MOLA instrument transmitted infrared laser pulses towards Mars at a rate of 10 times per second, and measured the time of flight to determine the range (distance) of the MGS spacecraft to the Martian surface. The range measurements resulted in precise topographic maps of Mars. The precision maps are applicable to studies in geophysics, geology and atmospheric circulation. MOLA also functioned as a passive radiometer, and measured the radiance of the surface of Mars at 1064 nanometers.
Planetary laser altimetry
A laser altimeter is an instrument that measures the distance from an orbiting spacecraft to the surface of the planet or asteroid that the spacecraft is orbiting. The distance is determined by measuring the complete round trip time of a laser pulse from the instrument to the surface of the planet or asteroid and back to the instrument.
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.
Lidar (also written LIDAR, LiDAR or LADAR) is a surveying technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser light. Although thought by some to be an acronym of Light Detection And Ranging, the term lidar was actually created as a portmanteau of "light" and "radar". Lidar is popularly used as a technology to make high-resolution maps, with applications in geodesy, geomatics, archaeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry, atmospheric physics, airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM) and laser altimetry. What is known as Lidar is sometimes simply referred to as laser scanning or 3D scanning, with terrestrial, airborne and mobile applications.
History and etymology
Lidar originated in the early 1960s, shortly after the invention of the laser, and combined laser-focused imaging with radar's ability to calculate distances by measuring the time for a signal to return. Its first applications came in meteorology, where the National Center for Atmospheric Research used it to measure clouds. The general public became aware of the accuracy and usefulness of lidar systems in 1971 during the Apollo 15 mission, when astronauts used a laser altimeter to map the surface of the moon.
The HiRISE camera NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have ... a) Basemap generated from data derived from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and the High-Resolution StereoCamera (HRSC)12.
In their Mars... They also used topographic data from the Mars OrbitalLaser Altimeter instrument aboard NASA's Mars GlobalSurveyor, which launched in November 1996 and mapped the planet for 4 ½ years.
Combining the new images with data with topographical data from NASA’s MarsOrbiterLaser Altimeter helps tell the ancient story of how Olympus Mons’s lower flanks catastrophically collapsed several 100 million years ago.
This figure from the study is a MarsOrbiterLaser Altimeter-derived topographic map showing Aeolis Dorsa between Aeolis Planum and Zephyria Planum ... There were naysayers when the Viking orbiters captured images of what looked like shorelines on Mars.
Now, to get a fascinating look at our planetary neighbor, Mars...Webb’s first images of Mars, captured by its NIRCam instrument Sept ... Reference map of the observed hemisphere of Mars from NASA and the Mars OrbiterLaser Altimeter (MOLA).
The image above shows a surface reference map from NASA and the MarsOrbiterLaser Altimeter (MOLA) on the left (with the two Webb NIRCam instrument views overlaid) ... Emirate’s Mars Mission (aka.
This image shows the NASA surface reference map and the MarsOrbiterLaser Altimeter (MOLA) on the left, with both fields of view superimposed from the Webb NIRCam instrument ...Images of Mars show ...
