As an aeronautical engineer, I'm looking foward to MRO resolving the various Mars landers and the wreckage of the failed landers. In particular it will be interesting to see if the old Soviet Mars landers can be found. The entire surface of Mars has already been imaged at lower resolution. There is probably a cartographic advantage in resolving Mars at higher resolution. However I don't believe MRO's mission is to image the entire planet at higher resolution. Certainly it is advantageous to image a landing site at the highest possible resolution and to track an active rover at highest resolution (We need to send more MERs to Mars). However what will be the science payoff from greater surface resolution? Mars is 99.99% basaltic rock on dust. Basalt on dust looks pretty much the same from 6 feet away as it does from 60 feet away.

You geologists out there: Please free me from my woeful ignorance. What's the big scientific advantage in imaging Mars at greater resolution?

Gary