November 14, 2002 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (UTC – 8 Hours) Join the Principal Investigators for the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission as they explain Odyssey’s initial discoveries and take questions from schools, museums and employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during a live interactive webcast broadcast from JPL’s von Karman auditorium.
October 8th, 2002
Mars polar cap may hide water reserve
A permanent cache of frozen water probably lies underneath the seasonal cap of carbon dioxide that covers the north pole of Mars, planetary scientists announced Tuesday. The conclusion is based on data from a NASA satellite orbiting the red planet, the Mars Odyssey, which watched the seasonal polar cap shrink between winter and spring this year.
October 1st, 2002
Mars Odyssey Releases First Data Archive to Scientists
NASA has released the first set of data taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to the Planetary Data System, which will now make the information available to research scientists through a new online distribution and access system. “This release is a major milestone for Mars scientists worldwide, since the first validated data from our instruments are now available to the entire scientific community,” said Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, the Odyssey project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “There are fundamentally new kinds of information in these data sets, including day and night infrared images, maps of hydrogen in the soil, and radiation hazard data for future Mars missions.”
September 27th, 2002
NASA/ASU: Possibility of Liquid Water On Surface
In today’s release from the NASA/ASU/THEMIS team, an image showing the floor of the Hellas Basin, there is an apparently “low-key” announcement of liquid water on the surface of Mars.
September 23rd, 2002
Mars: Planet of War, Planet of Secrecy
The outspoken Robert H. Williams explores his personal battles with NASA, including the filing of a Freedom Of Information Act request which led to his termination from teaching at a New York state university. Also, why hasn’t NASA/ASU released the raw data from Odyssey after 6 months, as their contract states they must?
August 19th, 2002
Team to analyze Mars data probe Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Vast reservoirs of underground ice on the Red Planet and other exciting discoveries by Mars Odyssey will be reviewed in Honolulu this week by the team that developed the spacecraft’s key instrument. “We were really surprised at just how much ice was buried just inches beneath the surface,” William Boynton, of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Institute, said in an interview here. Mars Odyssey was launched by NASA on April 7 last year and is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It carries a Gamma Ray Spectrometer — three instruments in one — designed to analyze the chemical composition of Mars’ surface and detect water at shallow depths.
June 6th, 2002
Mars in the Morning
Every morning, I go to Mars, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol says with a smile as she stands before a collage of Mars images in a darkened auditorium. Everyone is listening. And, with Nathalie, they go to Mars to see the craters, volcanoes, terraces, sedimentary layers, boulders, dried up ponds and washes. Time flies, and when the lights come up, Nathalie’s excitement and passion have drawn even more people to the joys of exploring Mars.
June 4th, 2002
Mars Odyssey Successfully Deploys Critical Science Boom
NASA’s Mars Odyssey has passed a major mechanical hurdle, deploying on June 4 a long mast that is capped by scientific sensors. The science gear is critical in determining the elemental makeup of the Martian surface.
May 28th, 2002
Found it! Ice on Mars
Using instruments on NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, surprised scientists have found enormous quantities of buried treasure lying just under the surface of Mars — enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over. And that may be only the tip of the iceberg. “This is really amazing,” says William Boynton of the University of Arizona. “This is the best direct evidence we have of subsurface water ice on Mars.” Indeed, he added, “what we have found is much more ice than we ever expected.” “It may be better to characterize this layer as dirty ice rather than as dirt containing ice,” notes Boynton. The amount of hydrogen detected corresponds to 20% to 50% ice by mass in the lower layer. Because rock has a greater density than ice, this amount is more than 50 percent water ice by volume. This means that if one heated a full bucket of this ice-rich polar soil it would result in more than half a bucket of liquid water.
May 28th, 2002
Odyssey’s Icy Discovery Warms Up Controversial Theories
The NASA spacecraft Odyssey’s measurements of the planet Mars’ huge cache of subsurface ice is yet another piece of data shoring up a controversial claim based on information found by the dual Viking landers in the 1970s. Not only is water ice an elixir for Martian life, it will help support human explorers of the future. Gilbert Levin, now CEO of Spherix Incorporated in Beltsville, Maryland, is long-time advocate that his Viking experiment did find Mars life. Levin has also long supported a view that liquid water exists on the surface of Mars.