HiRISE team to get first Mars images Friday morning (updated)

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) team now expects to receive its first pictures of Mars at The University of Arizona at 08:20 UTC Friday, March 24.

The HiRISE camera - the most powerful telescopic camera ever sent to another planet - is orbiting Mars on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The camera will take four images of Mars between 4:41 and 4:50 UTC Friday, March 24.
The images will reach Tucson a couple of hours later than initially estimated partly because a receiving station in NASA's Deep Space Network needs an extra half-hour to ensure lockup with the spacecraft's high-speed telemetry signal, said Eric Eliason, who manages the HiRISE Operations Center (HiROC).

The operations center is located in the C.P. Sonnett Space Sciences Building, 1541 E. University Blvd., on the UA campus in Tucson. Visitors will be able to see the images as they appear on screen, but sample image files will not be available for transfer until later Friday.

NASA and the HiRISE team plans to release the first images on NASA and UA websites Friday, said HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred S. McEwen. If the camera test is successful, sample black-and-white subframes will be available online at http://HiRISE.lpl.arizona.edu, http://www.nasa.gov/mro and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/. Processing of the test-image data to produce best-quality color images and larger views is expected to take more than a week.

The camera will take a second set of Mars images Saturday morning, March 25.

HiRISE images taken tomorrow and Saturday will be the camera's only photos for the next six months, while the spacecraft "aerobrakes" into a circular orbit for its science mission. Aerobraking involves dipping repeatedly into the upper atmosphere to scrub off speed and drop into successively more circular orbits.

The MRO mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.

University of Arizona News Release