The Ares Express Mars orbiter approaching Mars 1 hour before MOI burn, September 11, 2016. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on March 4.
One of the three "Tri-Ace" orbiters designed for detailed planetary surveying operated by the Canadian Space Agency and a worldwide group of planetary studies institutions (*), it will replace the 10 year old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the main Mars surface studies orbiter for the next decade. Over the next few months it will lower its orbit and change its inclination through aerobraking to the final mapping orbit.
Valles Marineris can be seen on the left of the spacecraft, and the crater basin of Argyre Planitia can be seen right off the right solar panel. The south pole ice cap is on the right hand side.
(*) The other two are Artemis Express, in orbit around the Moon since January 2016, and Aphrodite Express, scheduled to launch to Venus in early December. All of them use the same spacecraft bus and the same main science instruments (with tweaking for different planetary environments), saving lots of time and expenditures while still achieving the main science objectives.
P.S. This is a major milestone for my Orbiter adventures - after at least 2 years playing with it, I finally made the huge leap to BEO and this is my first planetary encounter! While the final Martian orbit isn't very good (210 x 5000 km x 120 deg. with 5% fuel left; planned 200 x 200 km x 90 deg.), considering that this is only my first attempt this is already very good! 
P.P.S. A second try from TMI-2 3 days before MOI now yields a 205 x 24600 km x 90.8 deg. orbit, which I now uses as the baseline. The higher apoapsis allows for studies of the Mars particle field at farther distances (e.g. the real Mars Express has an apoapsis of 10000 km), plus chances of using aerobraking to lower the orbit later on.
P.P.P.S. Aerobraking saves the day! By lowering the periapsis to 80 km (the aerodynamic forces shouldn't be too hard on the spacecraft), I was able to make it to a circular 200 km orbit in less than 3 weeks with only very little amount of fuel used. Looks like that means my aerospace company has got the planetary spacecraft operations license. :thumbup:
I wasn't aware of that though. My DSCS mission is not a copy from then.
