Although designed originally for a two year mission, ten years after launch, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) continues to reveal the Red Planet's diversity and activity, returning more data about Mars every week than the weekly total from all six other active Mars missions... Yet its work is far from over. The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars at an altitude of about 186 miles (300 kilometers), passing near the north and south poles about 12 times a day. The workhorse orbiter is now playing a key role in NASA's Journey to Mars planning as it searches for candidate sites where humans will first explore the Martian surface in the 2030s.