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The Mars Climate Orbiter WebCam is no longer active since the spacecraft was launched on December 11, 1998. Launch preparation time lapse movies are available, and the current position of the spacecraft is shown here.
The Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft was successfully launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Space Launch Complex 17 (SLC-17) on December 11, 1998. The Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) propulsive maneuver will occur in September 1999 and will place the orbiter into a highly elliptical, near polar orbit around Mars. Peripapse will be lowered to approximately 110 km altitude to initiate the aerobraking maneuvers. Successive passes of the orbiter through the upper atmosphere of Mars will slow the vehicle and lower the apoapse of the orbit to 450 km over the course of the 2 month aerobraking phase. The orbit then will be circularized using the orbiter's onboard propulsion resulting in the design 400 km altitude, near circular, polar science mapping orbit. Science operation of the PMIRR and MARCI instruments will be conducted over the course of the one Martian year (687 Earth day) mapping mission. The orbiter will continue operations in a relay only mode following the science mission in support of any future U.S. or international Mars surface missions
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