NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) successfully launched itself off from Cape Canaveral in Florida earlier this morning. This was the first launch featuring the new Atlas V rocket.

From the NASA web site…

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s mission is to see if long-standing bodies of water ever existed on the planet. While missions like the Mars Exploration Rovers have shown that water once flowed across the planet’s surface, scientists are yet to determine if it was around long enough to provide a habitat for life.

Thus far the MRO appears to be healthy and performing properly. It is communicating with ground stations and has unfurled its solar arrays in preparation of it’s 7 month journey to the land of the little green people.

Let’s just hope that the folks at NASA have worked out that little metric/imperial problem they had a few years ago and aren’t about to propel another expensive hunk of space debris into the cosmos. Silly Rocket Scientists!