Nasa spacecraft prepares to enter orbit around Mars

After a seven-month journey, a Nasa spacecraft closed in on Mars today on a mission to examine the Red Planet in unprecedented detail from low orbit.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has travelled 310 million miles, was programmed to fire its engines to slow itself enough to be captured into the planet’s orbit.

Mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, waited on edge as the two-ton orbiter prepared for the riskiest manoeuvre of the 720 million dollar mission.

“Your team practices and you prepare, but you never know what will happen on game day,” said project scientist Richard Zurek.

The orbiter was to fire its thrusters for 27 minutes this afternoon, disappearing behind Mars and temporarily losing radio contact with controllers.

Engineers will not know whether the manoeuvre was successful until the spacecraft returns to Earth view almost an hour after the burn begins.

The spacecraft will spend seven months dipping into the upper atmosphere to tighten the orbit.

The orbiter is expected to startcollecting scientific data in November.