The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was a US spacecraft developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched November 1996. It began the United States's return to Mars after a 10-year absence. It completed its primary mission in January 2001 and was in its third extended mission phase when, on 2 November 2006, the spacecraft failed to respond to messages and commands. A faint signal was detected three days later which indicated that it had gone into safe mode. Attempts to recontact the spacecraft and resolve the problem failed, and NASA officially ended the mission in January 2007.
Read more about Mars Global Surveyor: Specifications, Scientific Instruments, Launch and Orbit Insertion, Aerobraking, Mapping, Mission Results, MER Communications Subsystem, Loss of Contact, MGS and General Relativity: The Lense-Thirring Test, Discovery of Water On Mars, Mission Timeline, Other Pictures
Famous quotes containing the words mars and/or global:
“Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse,
And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardinesse.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view, intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)