Mars is a long way away, but for the last few years NASA scientists have been gathering a wealth of information about the Red Planet thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in operation since 2006. The space agency has reported that the orbiter has passed a significant milestone — it’s now beamed over 200 terabits of data back to Earth. That’s equivalent to three solid months of HD video or 25,600GB of data.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gathers its own data, but it also serves as a transmitter for the data acquired by rovers on the surface of Mars. That 200 terabit figure does include this second-hand data, but 99.9% of the total volume comes from the orbiter’s own array of six scientific instruments. This is about three times the volume of all the data gathered from NASA’s Deep Space Network of probes over the last decade.
All that data makes its way back home in bursts each time the satellite’s 2-hour orbit puts it in line-of-sight with Earth. This happens around 30 times a month, except for the times when the sun is between Mars and Earth. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is probably bigger than you think — it uses a 10-foot dish antenna to transmit the data and is powered by 215 square feet of solar panels.
The orbiter has mapped large swaths of the Martian surface with high-resolution topographical instruments and scanned for surface minerals. Data gathered over the course of the mission has been used to show that Mars is not such a dead planet after all. The release of carbon dioxide and (quite possibly) liquid water from underground are changing the landscape as we watch from orbit. The mission was only scheduled to last through 2008, but has already been extended several times. This probe still has a few years of funneling data back to Earth before it’s decommissioned.