Mars Orbiter Likely Lockheed's Last

[yevaud]

<i>New York -<br /><br />If the scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab successfully navigate the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) into the red planet's orbit today, the company who built the spacecraft may feel a bittersweet sense of triumph.<br /><br />Seeking evidence of ice and water, which can provide clues about whether life ever existed on Mars, the MRO carries on board the most sophisticated imaging equipment ever sent to another planet, including an infrared spectrometer for identifying minerals, a panoramic wide-angle viewer and, perhaps most importantly, a telescopic ultra-high resolution camera built by Ball Aerospace. Called HiRISE, the camera is capable of photographing objects as small as a baby's crib from 125 miles to 250 miles above the planet.<br /><br />Lockheed Martin representatives will be on hand at the JPL in Pasadena, Calif., and at the company's Denver, Colo.-based space division, to aid in the orbiter's tricky transition into a dangerous environment, which made short work of the Mars Observer probe in 1993 and the Mars Climate Observer in 1999.<br /><br />The $720 million spacecraft's trajectory is currently "right on the money," according to Jim Crocker, vice president of Civil Space, at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. But if the orbiter misses the mark, it will be a major disappointment. The MRO is likely to be one of the last scientific interplanetary-exploration missions that Lockheed will be involved in.<br /><br />Despite President George W. Bush's 2004 speech trumpeting the future of interplanetary exploration, NASA's $16.8 billion budget for 2007 directs about $3.5 billion into the aging Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs at the expense of other missions. These cuts will affect other government contract companies involved in the space race, like Northrup Grumman and Boeing.<br /><br />Already several multimillion-dollar Lockheed contracts have been canceled, including a highly anticipated unmanned tri</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>