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  Home arrow News arrow News from Space arrow MRO bullseye

 
MRO bullseye | Print |  E-mail
Written by staff   
Wednesday, 15 March 2006

>MRO bullseye
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) successfully reached Mars on Friday and flawlessly achieved orbit, according to space.com.

“Today was picture perfect,” said James Graf, NASA’s MRO project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a post-orbital arrival mission briefing. “I thought today was a simulation because we came so close to being right on.”

>fire and ice
The Stardust spacecraft, which flew within 150 miles of the comet Wild 2 in January 2004, brought back samples that may provide new insights into the composition of comets and how they vary from one another, scientists said Monday in a NASA release.

Among the materials found was something similar to olivine.

“It seems that comets are … a mixture of materials formed at all temperatures, at places very near the early sun and at places very remote from it,” said Michael Zolensky, Stardust curator and co-investigator at JSC.

Olivine’s components include iron, magnesium and other elements. The Wild 2 samples have other high-temperature materials containing calcium, aluminum and titanium.

 
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