| 
    MRO's SHARAD instrument
    side view
     The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and
    its SHARAD (Shallow Subsurface Radar) instrument, which will
    seek liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet
    (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars' crust. SHARAD will probe the subsurface
    using radar waves using a 15-25 megahertz frequency band in order
    to get the desired high-depth resolution. 
    In this image the SHARAD instrument
    has detected subsurface water which I've shown in a side view.
    The SHARAD antennae are the two white poles sticking out of MRO's
    back. The radar pulses emanating from the antennae have been
    simplified. This image only shows the downward pulses but in
    reality there would be upward pulses as well. The SHARAD instrument
    is a joint project of both NASA and ASI, the Italian Space Agency.  |