ESA Science & Technology - Mars Express radio science experiment

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Mars Express radio science experiment

Date: 26 April 2012
Copyright: Royal Observatory of Belgium
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As the spacecraft flies over a volcano, it experiences an attraction towards the elevated mass. Mars Express measures these perturbations in the spacecraft's velocity that induce a detectable Doppler shift on the radio signal between the spacecraft and Earth tracking ground stations. These measurements can be translated into high-precision values for subsurface density variations, providing insight into the thermal history of Mars.

Last Update: 1 September 2019