NASA scientists have wrapped up a picture-perfect aerobraking mission to Mars by looking toward even more futuristic methods of using a planet’s atmosphere to slow spacecrafts. They closed the book last week on a 75-day effort to ease the 2001 Mars Odyssey into a tighter orbit using a novel process called aerobraking, which means gently dipping the spacecraft into the dense atmosphere to slow it down. They look today to inaugurate missions that take mere aerobraking to new levels and have the potential of taking humans to other planets.
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.
July 2nd, 2001
Mars advances to the front in this month’s night skies
If a Martian wants to wave hello, this is the time. The red planet is closer to Earth during July than it has been since 1988, hanging like a ripe cherry in the southeastern sky at dusk. Look for Mars early and often, however, for the planet already has slipped behind Earth in the race around the sun and we are pulling farther ahead day by day. By the end of July, Mars will appear noticeably smaller.
June 3rd, 2001
How long till you can send e-mail to Mars?
To reach colonists on Mars, you might attach “mars.sol” to the e-mail address. For retrieving images from one of Jupiter’s moons, a file transfer from a “europa.sol” site might be in order. The space missions making that possible may be years or lifetimes away, but initial steps toward extending the Internet’s reach are already in the works. The first component, a short-range transceiver, hitched a ride on the Mars Odyssey, which was launched in April and is due to reach the Red Planet in October.
April 30th, 2001
Mars and Mercury dominate May skies
Mercury and Mars dominate the evening sky this month, with Mercury putting on its best display of the year while Mars warms up for its best appearance in a decade. Earth is overtaking Mars in the race around the sun. Mars will appear to move to the east, or retrograde, against the stars, reaching the constellation of Sagittarius on May 11. Mars then resumes its normal, westerly course, ending the month in Scorpius. As the two planets draw closer together, Mars appears bigger and brighter. Mars also is slowly nearing the sun which increases the planet’s brightness.
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.
February 4th, 2001
February offers great viewing of five planets, including Mars
February is a planet-watcher’s special. Four of the five planets visible to the naked eye are on display, and even Mercury may be spotted if the sky is clear this week. Mars rises after midnight. The red planet appears to be moving eastward from the stars of Libra toward those of Scorpius, which it joins at the end of February. The Earth actually is overtaking Mars in their race around the sun. By summer the distance between the two will shrink from the present 112 million miles to 42 million. Little detail on Mars is visible now, but that will change as the planet nears opposition.
August 25th, 2000
NASA puts wish list on display to public
Even as it leads the partnership assembling a new Earth-orbiting space station, NASA is looking to more distant vistas. Possible destinations include the moon, visited by Apollo astronauts between 1969 and 1972; an asteroid; or a solar orbit nearly a million miles away that would serve as the site for a powerful new space telescope. But especially, Mars is a target. “Mars continues to be the grand goal,” said Bret Drake, who leads mission planning activities at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
August 7th, 2000
Space agency shoots for stars of the Hollywood variety
Making movies may not be rocket science but NASA researcher Kathryn Clark knows one way to reach the stars is to start with luminaries of the Hollywood variety. Clark and other scientists are increasingly helping Hollywood actors and filmmakers make sci-fi movies as realistic as possible in an effort to fire the public’s interest in space exploration.
July 20th, 2000
NASA weighs expense, risk of mission to seek Martian life
As NASA races to revamp its failed Mars exploration program, scientists are torn over how aggressively the agency should proceed with a risky and expensive robotic mission that could hasten the search for life on the Red Planet. On Thursday, more than 200 experts wrapped up three days of NASA-sponsored debate at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston over how the agency should reshape its Mars exploration strategy in response to a pair of mission failures last year.