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Published January 1997 | public
Journal Article

Mars Global Surveyor: Ready for launch in November 1996

Abstract

The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft will be launched toward Mars in November 1996. This mission is the first in the NASA Mars Surveyor Program and has been under development for the past two years. In this report the status of the MGS mission, three months prior to launch, will be described along with three specific topics: aerobraking, the lander to orbiter relay and the common operations project for the Mars Surveyor Program. The Mars Global Surveyor mission is intended to accomplish a portion of the scientific objectives of the Mars Observer Mission which was lost in 1993, three days before entering Mars orbit. To meet the established objectives a low, sun-synchronous, near circular, polar-mapping orbit is required which drives the need for aerobraking before mapping begins. MGS will carry a lander to orbiter relay capability for use with the Russian 1996 lander and small probes to be dropped to the surface of Mars by the 1998 Surveyor Mission. For the Mars Surveyor Program operation of all the landers and orbiters will be conducted under a single cost constrained Mars Surveyor Operation Project.

Additional Information

© 1997 International Astronautical Federation. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. The work described in this paper was performed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The authors wish to acknowledge the work of the many members of the MGS project team who conducted the work on which this report is based.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023