NASA, Tuesday

NASA, the American space agency has reported that its Mars Orbiter is orbiting Mars. In a rare stroke of good luck for NASA, the orbiter, which was launched 7 months ago, managed to get close enough to Mars to orbit its target planet. This brings the success rate to just above 50%, after half the recent orbiter missions failed. The orbiter, officially known as Ivan Ivanovich, was detected in a sleepy, eliptical orbit around the red planet as of two days ago.

The mission is expected to complete the most sophisticated survey of the planet yet, including finding clues to the key questions of whether the planet has water or ever sustained life.
"Rather than send another robot," project manager Bob McCurdy explained, "we decided to thrust old Ivan down that way and see what he could find. There's nothing like the motivation of life-threatening thirst to encourage a man to look for water."

Ivanovich, whose mission has seen him as far afield as Saturn, was expected to be partly motivated by the brake fluid still left in the cables of surface rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
"If Ivan can get some of that into him it should relieve the DTs he's been getting since his paint thinner ran out last week," said MrCurdy. "In many ways this isn't just a search for new frontiers, it's a mission of mercy."

Ivanovich has been equipped with a telescopic camera and told to "sputnik his ass as close to the planet as possible while snapping shots of the surface. Then you can go get the brake fluid."

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