With two more Mars orbiters sent into space last year, traffic has picked up around the Red Planet
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft and India’s Mangalyaan probe both began circling the Red Planet last September, bringing the total number of operational Mars orbiters to five — the most ever. NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express are the other three spacecraft.
“Previously, collision avoidance was coordinated between the Odyssey and MRO navigation teams,” Robert Shotwell, Mars Program chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
