Mars Odyssey today is a step closer toward its mission of mapping the Red Planet. Odyssey is carrying the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS), built under the direction of Professor William V. Boynton at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The GRS is a suite of three instruments: the Gamma Subsystem, built by the UA, the Neutron Spectrometer, built by Los Alamos National Laboratory and the High Energy Neutron Detector, built by the Space Research Institute, Moscow. Boynton and other Mars Odyssey scientists will detail their science objectives Friday, March 1, at a news conference to be telecast from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
February 20th, 2002
New Mars satellite begins search for water
A new Mars satellite turned on its scientific instruments this week, kicking off a mapping mission in search of hot spots and hidden water on the red planet. The Mars Odyssey flicked on its visible and infrared camera, and a spectrometer that can detect more than one dozen elements, including hydrogen, which could indicate the presence of frozen water underground, according to NASA.
February 19th, 2002
Odyssey Ready To Do Some Science
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has begun its science mapping mission. The spacecraft turned its science instruments toward Mars on Monday, February 18. Flight controllers report that the thermal emission imaging system was turned on this morning. The camera system, which takes both visible and infrared images, will go through a period of calibration before the first science images are taken during the next few days. The first images will be released at a news conference on March 1.
February 18th, 2002
Probe sees hydrogen in peek at Mars Florida Today
NASA took the Mars Odyssey spacecraft for a test run Monday for five orbits’ worth of science measurements. So far, results indicate hydrogen in the surface of the Martian southern hemisphere. Click for a larger graphic showing how a virtual shovel digs for elements on Mars. “It’s beautiful,” said William Feldman, a scientist with Los Alamos National Laboratory who operates the neutron spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. “Everything is very preliminary because we don’t have enough to make a map yet.” A full map of Mars’ surface elements will take about a week.
February 7th, 2002
Mars Odyssey Deploys Antenna, Nearly Ready for Science Mission
NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft, which recently settled into its proper orbit around Mars, has now deployed an antenna that is needed for high-speed data downloads to Earth. The high-gain communications antenna, as it is called, was unfurled at 10:29 ET Tuesday, Feb. 5. The act is on of the final steps required to get the probe ready to begin science missions. The antenna boom was deployed to its latched position with a motor-driven hinge and locked into place as expected, officials said Wednesday. The high-gain antenna is 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) in diameter, with a parabolic shape. The antenna can transmit at data rates as high as 110 thousand bits per second.
January 31st, 2002
Mars Odyssey Probe Settles into Science Orbit
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft settled into its final orbit Wednesday and is now prepared to begin its science mission. The craft reached Mars Oct. 23 and engineers have been gradually refining its orbit from an elongated one that took the craft far from the Red Planet to a nearly circular one that is 249 miles (400-kilometers) above the planet. “We are now in our final mapping orbit and we don’t expect to perform any additional maneuvers to change the orbit,” said Bob Mase, Odyssey’s lead navigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
January 19th, 2002
Exploring the Red Planet Science News
Last week, flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., breathed a collective sigh of relief. Although in 1999 they had lost the last two spacecraft that journeyed to Mars, their current mission to the Red Planet had completed a risky maneuver, using the friction of the Martian atmosphere to begin settling into its designated orbit 400 kilometers above the surface. Early next month, if all continues according to plan, the Mars Odyssey craft will begin a 2-year exploration of the composition of the Martian surface, hunt for near-surface deposits of water, and examine the planet’s radiation background. Odyssey embarks on its mission at a time when questions about past and present conditions on the planet, including its water content and ability to harbor life, seem more puzzling than ever. “We’re in state of maximal confusion,” says planetary geologist David A. Paige of the University of California, Los Angeles.
January 11th, 2002
Mars Odyssey Completes Aerobraking
Flight controllers for NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft sent commands overnight to raise the spacecraft up out of the atmosphere and conclude the aerobraking phase of the mission. At 12:18 a.m. Pacific time Jan. 11, Odyssey fired its small thrusters for 244 seconds, changing its speed by 20 meters per second (45 miles per hour) and raising its orbit by 85 kilometers (53 miles). The closest point in Odyssey’s orbit, called the periapsis, is now 201 kilometers (125 miles) above the surface of Mars. The farthest point in the orbit, called the apoapsis, is at an altitude of 500 kilometers (311 miles). During the next few weeks, flight controllers will refine the orbit until the spacecraft reaches its final mapping altitude, a 400-kilometer (249-mile) circular orbit.
January 10th, 2002
Lockheed Martin’s Colorado-Built Spacecraft Settles into Mars’ Orbit
The Martian atmosphere is about to stop being such a drag on a Colorado-built spacecraft. By January 11th, controllers will stop dipping the 2001 Mars Odyssey into the Red Planet’s dusty atmosphere — a process called aerobraking that is used to slow a spacecraft and round out its orbit without using precious fuel. The 11 weeks of maneuvers have shortened Odyssey’s lap time from 18 1/2 hours, when it went into Martian orbit on Oct. 23, to just under two hours.