It has two stations, one in each hemisphere, each of which use cameras to make short exposure photographs of most of the visible sky[1] to observe stars to a magnitude of 8.4.

[2] The Northern Hemisphere station at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, started observations in February 2015.

The Southern Hemisphere station at La Silla Observatory, Chile, saw first light in July 2017.

[3] On 17 July 2017, the discovery of MASCARA-1b, a confirmed superjovian exoplanet with a mass 3.7MJ, was reported by the survey team.

[4] The planet was found unusually reflective for hot Jupiter with the measured geometric albedo of 0.171+0.066−0.068 and dayside temperature of 3062+66−68 K.[5] Attempts to spectroscopically characterize its composition were failing as in 2022 due to relatively high planetary surface gravity resulting in compact atmosphere.