At about 11:34 UTC, DSN received a transmission from MRO that HiRISE was successfully turned on, after the end of the solar conjunction. This marks the official start of the Primary Science Phase (PSP) of HiRISE, and MRO in general. During this time we expect to image 1-2% of Mars in high resolution. Starting late Tuesday evening/early Wednesday morning, we will begin to receive pictures from Mars, without much of a pause for some time to come.

I would just like to offer my thanks to all of those who helped to make HiRISE at Ball Aerospace, the flight engineers at JPL, operations team, programmers, targeting specialists, scientists, and everyone else involved in the project. The long period of preparation is over, and now we begin with the real thing. Have a fun 2-year PSP all!