Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS): Managing strategic and tactical relay for the evolving Mars network

Orbital relay of landed asset data have been a critical component of the Martian communications network for landed Mars missions from 2004 through the current day. Lessons learned from the first several years of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and Phoenix lander relay experiences highlighted clear deficiencies with relay processes and tools that directly led to the proposal for and implementation of a new system, the Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS). MaROS provides a central point of coordination between lander and orbiter mission teams for management of strategic and tactical relay activities, and further provides resources to track and correlate relay session performance data. MaROS has been in use by the operations teams of Odyssey, MRO, and MER since mid-2010, and development continues to improve and expand the system capabilities. This paper will discuss the considerations for the MaROS implementation, provide an overview of the architecture and design, and describe the role of the system in the current and next-generation Mars Relay Network.