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Space
Space
Science
Keith Cooper

NASA teaches Mars orbiter to roll over in quest to find Red Planet water

A photo of the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter over Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has learned to do backward rolls to give its onboard radar better opportunities to find water-ice beneath the red planet's surface.

"Not only can you teach an old spacecraft new tricks, you can open up entirely new regions of the subsurface to explore by doing so," Gareth Morgan of the Planetary Science Institute and co-investigator on MRO's Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, said in a statement.

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