Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), September 13th, 2006
Byline: Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
NASA's $720 million, Colorado- built Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its thrusters this week and slipped into the nearly circular orbit that will allow it to view the planet in unprecedented detail for the next two years.
After traveling 310 million miles in seven months, the robotic spacecraft reached Mars on March 10.
It then spent five months repeatedly skimming through the planet's thin upper atmosphere, using frictional drag to reshape its orbit in a process called aerobraking.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter executed 426 "drag passes" through...
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