The intervening weeks will be spent in a manoeuvre called aerobraking, which involves using the air-resistance of the thin Martian atmosphere to change the elliptical initial orbit into a circular one from which the planet's surface can be examined in detail.
You can tell Microsoft is especially proud of this detail: the first Surface ad emphasizes that feature to the point where Windows RT's various features more or less take a backseat.
"We want people to look through images of the Martian surface - it's a region that's never been explored in this detail before - no one has ever seen these images close up, so we don't know what would be there, " says Dr Lintott.