Mars Global Surveyor

MGS

Mission Profile

Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was a NASA Mars orbiter launched on 7 November 1996 aboard a Delta II 7925 that completed the most comprehensive mapping of Mars ever achieved after the Mariner 9 mission, operating successfully for nearly a decade in a polar mapping orbit around the Red Planet. Its six instruments including the MOLA laser altimeter, TES thermal emission spectrometer, MOC wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras, and magnetometer produced a definitive atlas of Mars including the first topographic map of the entire planet and the discovery that Mars lacks a global magnetic field. MOC's narrow-angle camera imaged features as small as 1.5 meters across, revealing gullies, layered sedimentary deposits, and recent changes suggesting liquid water activity in geologically recent times. MGS operated until November 2006 when contact was lost due to a software command error.