The Mars Odyssey spacecraft rocketed away Saturday on a 286 million-mile journey to the Red Planet and what NASA hopes will be a mission of redemption. It is the space agency’s first launch to Mars since a pair of humiliating failures in 1999.
April 7th, 2001
Odyssey heads for Mars: Bruised Lockheed gets reassurance from `2001′ author Rocky Mountain News
The Denver-built 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft rocketed away Saturday on a 286 million-mile journey to the Red Planet and what NASA and Lockheed Martin hope will be a mission of redemption. It is the space program’s first launch to Mars since a pair of humiliating failures in 1999.
April 7th, 2001
Mars Odyssey Begins Journey to Red Planet
The search for answers to basic questions about humanity’s place in the universe continued Saturday with the launch of NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft on an epic, 286-million-mile journey to the Red Planet. The interplanetary voyage started from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:02 a.m. EDT (15:02 GMT) and is expected to take six months before the $297 million mission settles into orbit around Mars on October 24.
April 6th, 2001
Looking for a Comeback
The Mars Odyssey, due to blast off for the Red Planet on Saturday from Cape Canaveral, will carry with it a hefty list of objectives, from snapping detailed images of Mars, to detecting the planet’s mineral content, to measuring radiation levels in its orbit. From these measurements
April 6th, 2001
New Mars odyssey about to begin
Beginning a new chapter in Mars exploration, NASA expects to launch Saturday a powerful new orbiter to scour the red planet for evidence of underground water and geologic hot spots. The $300 million Mars Odyssey will become the first spacecraft launched to the red planet since two disastrous failures in 1999. Mars Odyssey will search for water, map surface minerals and measure radiation levels — observations that could provide clues about possible extraterrestrial life.
April 5th, 2001
Space Weather Worry for Mars Odyssey Launch
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey is ready for a Saturday liftoff, as long as the Sun cooperates. Solar activity is churning out higher than normal doses of protons — high-energy particles that can wreak havoc with microelectronics on satellites, as well as rocket boosters. These energetic protons can zap equipment causing “single-event upsets” — glitches in computers that can then send out faulty signals to hardware.
April 2nd, 2001
NASA Returning to Mars With Anxiety and Hope The Washington Post
Humbled by Mars, NASA is about to send another spacecraft to study it. The launch of the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, set for Saturday, is the first since the agency was staggered by 1999’s back-to-back failures of missions to the planet. And it is the first Mars craft to be dispatched since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration drastically revamped the program based on multiple investigations of what went wrong.
April 1st, 2001
NASA pins hopes on Mars probe
After back-to-back mission failures that devastated its Mars exploration program, NASA hopes to recover with a new probe designed to scan the Red Planet for signs of underground ice and elusive geyserlike springs. Strong evidence of water in either form would furnish a guidepost for robotic and possibly human missions to search the rugged terrain for evidence that Mars hosts or once hosted some form of life.
April 1st, 2001
A new Martian odyssey is about to begin CBS News
With memories of recent back-to-back failures still painfully fresh, NASA is leaving no stone unturned to make sure the $305 million Mars Odyssey probe makes it safely into orbit around the Red Planet later this year. The solar-powered 758-kilogram spacecraft is scheduled for launch April 7 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Boeing Delta 2 rocket. If all goes well, the Odyssey orbiter will slip into a highly elliptical orbit around Mars on October 24.
March 31st, 2001
2001: A Mars Odyssey Spectrum
On 7 April, a probe will set out for Mars that could be pivotal in the search for water–and life–on the red planet. The 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter will also be attempting to erase memories of the failure of the last two NASA missions to that destination. The Odyssey’s mission is to map the planet’s geology, paying particular attention to the role of water, both past and present.