Up in orbit around Mars, another mission is receiving an upgrade, which sounds impressive when you consider the distance involved. Or possibly less impressive when you learn it’s a software upgrade. That sounds much easier to implement at a distance.

Launched back in 2003, ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has been studying the red planet for nearly twenty years. One of the instruments onboard is the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding or MARSIS instrument. This particular bit of Mars Express played a huge role in the discovery of liquid water on Mars, which includes a suspected subsurface 20-by-30 kilometer briny lake near the south pole.

MARSIS uses a 40-meter-long antenna to send low-frequency radio waves at the planet. Those waves reflect off the surface for the most part, but some travel into the crust and get reflected back where different materials meet. Based on the different distances the beams travel, scientists can map Mars to a depth of several kilometers and even determine the thickness and composition of various layers.

But this amazing instrument was designed using Windows 98, and the mission team decided it was long past time for an upgrade. New software is being implemented that will improve signal reception as well as onboard data processing. Deputy PI Andrea Cicchetti explains: Previously, to study the most important features on Mars, and to study its moon Phobos at all, we relied on a complex technique that stored a lot of high-resolution data and filled up the instrument’s on-board memory very quickly. By discarding data that we don’t need, the new software allows us to switch MARSIS on for five times as long and explore a much larger area with each pass.

Due to the new upgrades and the low cost of operations, Mars Express will continue to be a martian workhorse for years to come.

More Information

ESA press release