Boulder, Colorado - Save a lot of room in your Mars picture book. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a you-haven't-seen-anything-yet spacecraft.

Set for liftoff in August 2005, the MRO will scrutinize the red planet like no previous orbiter and become the cornerstone of a futuristic interplanetary Internet.

"MRO is a virtual dream machine," said James Garvin, NASA lead scientist for Mars exploration at the space agency's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C. "It will set in motion our next decade of Mars exploration. It must serve as a site finder, subsurface mapper, atmosphere-climate documenter, and much, much more."

As its name suggests, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's duties are divided into a trio of scouting purposes: global mapping, regional surveying, and high-resolution targeting of specific spots on the planet's surface.

MRO is jam-packed with science instruments:

In addition, MRO will tote along experimental packages of navigation and communications gear. Also joining in on the journey are two more science investigations, one to map Mars' gravity field, the other to use accelerometers to better gauge the structure of the Martian atmosphere.

Given all this, it's no wonder that NASA's Garvin views MRO as a major deep space "observatory."

MRO is being designed and built at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colorado.

A critical design review of the MRO was successfully completed in May, said Kevin McNeill, MRO program manager at Lockheed Martin. Solar panel segments, the composite skeleton of the spacecraft, as well as engineering development units that are precursors to command and data handling equipment are taking shape, he said.

"We're finding that both physical size as well as just pushing data through the system are the interesting aspects right now of getting MRO built and tested," McNeill said. A major milestone is MRO's assembly -- test and launch operations -- scheduled to start in April of next year. "That's when we start to build up the entire system to make sure it all plays together."

"All of this is in preparation for pack and ship to the Cape [Canaveral] in approximately May of 2005," McNeill told SPACE.com. A Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 booster will hurl MRO toward the red planet, with the launch window opening Aug. 10 and the craft arriving at Mars in March 2006.

What follows next is pure "science friction," roughly six months of aerobraking whereby MRO dips in and

out of Mars' upper atmosphere to slow down and achieve a more suitable orbit for science operations. For primary science operations that start in November 2006, the orbiter will reside in a 160-mile by 200-mile (255-kilometer by 320-kilometer) near-polar orbit around Mars.

Loaded with fuel, MRO could go well beyond the two Earth years of its primary mission. "We've got fuel onboard to last ten years. If you consider Mars Global Surveyor, Galileo out at Jupiter, I don't think there's any question that MRO will be operating and returning science for a lot of years to come," McNeill said.

In using the HiRISE camera, Mars can be surveyed as never before. But snagging those high-resolution photos won't come easy. MRO is far from being a "point-and-click" spacecraft.

Just like super-snooper spy satellites circling Earth, MRO needs to precisely steer itself during photo shoots to reduce smear as it passes over select target areas.

"It's a very sophisticated instrument," said Steve Jolly, chief systems engineer for MRO at Lockheed Martin. "Getting that correct motion compensation it's a very, very interesting problem."

"Of all the terabytes of data that will come back over the two-year mission, roughly less than one percent of the surface of Mars will have been imaged," Jolly said. "That gives you an idea of the incredible high-resolution of the camera."

Built by Ball Aerospace here in Boulder, HiRISE has as high priority peering at potential Mars touchdown zones for future landers. Phoenix, the newly selected Mars Scout lander for 2007, as well as the Mars Science Laboratory to be dispatched in 2009, both stand to benefit from MRO's surveying skills.

And there's even hope of catching sight of spacecraft already at rest on Mars.

The Viking landers of vintage 1970s fame, as well as the Mars Polar Lander -- lost due to an apparent crash landing in December 1999 -- should be large enough to be framed by HiRISE, Jolly said, although he's not aware of any official program plan to do such location shooting.

There's going to be an information landslide with all the data expected to be transmitted by MRO. "Trying to figure out what you are seeing, and why it looks the way it does that's terrific for science, but is going to make for some lengthy meetings," Jolly said.

With MRO sweeping over the planet, reflight above the same area can be done every 12 to 14 days. Re-sampling of areas can be accomplished, as can side-to-side slewing of the equipment to yield stereo imagery. "The spacecraft has to do gymnastics without disturbing the pointing of HiRISE," Jolly said.

At Lockheed Martin's Space Systems facilities, McNeill said, MRO's day-to-day functioning will initially involve a team of 25 to 30 people. That number will be scaled back as operators become more familiar with the spacecraft, he said.

"We're working hard to improve efficiency in operating spacecraft," said Lockheed Martin's Steve Price, manager of business development for space exploration systems. "We have right now five spacecraft that we're flying," he said, including Stardust and the recently lofted Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF).

The orbiter's telecommunications systems will also establish a crucial service for future spacecraft, becoming the first link in a communications bridge back to Earth. Often called an interplanetary Internet, this link can be used by numerous international spacecraft in coming years. By testing the use of a radio frequency called Ka-band, MRO may demonstrate the potential for greater performance in communications using significantly less power.

In terms of an orbiter, MRO is a quantum step from anything NASA has previously done at Mars.

So explains James Graf, project manager for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. JPL manages the MRO project for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C.

Major advances in instrument subsystem capabilities have aided in pulling the MRO together, Graf said. "We're about 22 months from launch. The hardware is starting to come together," he said.

An MRO success criteria calls for five years of operations.

"We'll essentially be in low Mars orbit for five Earth years. We have sufficient fuel that we could boost and stay at a higher orbit for another five years," Graf said. The orbiter's communications capabilities will provide a critical transmission relay for yet-to-launch surface missions, he added.

"MRO represents a cornerstone for future missions in the Mars program," Graf said.

In contrasting the huge data output expected from MRO, Graf said while present Mars missions are returning terrific data, "they are sending it over the equivalent of a dial-up modem line."

"When we get to Mars, and at the planet's closest approach to Earth, we're going to be able to have the equivalent of two Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL). It's going to be an amazing amount of data coming back," Graf said.

Richard Zurek, JPL project scientist for MRO, said it's not just a matter of analyzing one data set. Rather, the orbiter can churn out multiple data streams.

"Certainly such a large volume of data presents a challenge. The issue is one of efficiency. How you get this data moved around, as well as anticipate what technologies might become available in the years to come," Zurek said.

"The real breakthroughs," Zurek said, "may come in very different kinds of technologies to store data where you can put a lot in a little and distribute it around."