Flight controllers for NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey mission report the spacecraft is in excellent health and is in a looping orbit around Mars of 18 hours and 36 minutes. The navigation proved to be precise. “We were aiming for a point 300 kilometers (186.5 miles) above Mars and we hit that point within one kilometer (.6 miles),” reports Bob Mase, the Mars Odyssey lead navigator at JPL. “Because of the excellent main engine burn, we will not need to do any more maneuvers to adjust the orbit before we begin aerobraking on Friday.”
Mars Odyssey Spacecraft Poised to Arrive at Mars Today
NASA engineers will fire the Mars Odyssey rockets for 19 minutes tomorrow, hoping it will go into orbit around the red planet after 200 days of travel and about 285 million miles logged.
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey Spacecraft Poised to Arrive at Mars
Odyssey was launched April 7 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Other than our Moon, Mars has attracted more spacecraft exploration attempts than any other object in the solar system, and no other planet has proved as daunting to success. Of the 30 missions sent to Mars by three countries over 40 years, less than one-third have been successful. “The spacecraft, ground system and flight team are ready for Mars orbit insertion,” said Matthew Landano, Odyssey project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “We uplinked the sequence of commands that control the orbit insertion on October 15. Now we will closely monitor the spacecraft’s progress as it approaches Mars and executes the orbit insertion burn.”
Dust Storms on Mars
Press Conference – October 11, 2001: A pair of eagle-eyed NASA spacecraft — Mars Global Surveyor and Hubble Space Telescope — are giving amazed astronomers a ringside seat to the biggest global dust storm seen on Mars in several decades. The Martian dust storm, larger by far than any seen on Earth, has raised a cloud of dust that has engulfed the entire planet for the past three months.
JPL Names Chief Engineer for Mars Exploration Program
Charles Whetsel has been named chief engineer of the Mars Program, a position he has held in an acting capacity since February. As chief engineer, Whetsel will lead the technical development of all current and future Mars missions. Along with other members of the Mars Program staff, he will identify promising mission architectures and technologies, while resolving technical issues affecting multiple projects within the existing Mars Program. He will also lead the Mars Program Systems Engineering Team, comprised of senior engineers from across NASA and other key international space agencies participating in the cooperative exploration of Mars.
‘Good Vibrations’ May Prevent Bone Loss in Space
New NASA research suggests bones that are slightly shaken may help astronauts stay healthier during long spaceflights, and could be used to help people suffering from bone loss here on Earth. Scientists funded by NASA and its National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston uncovered evidence that barely perceptible vibrations may stimulate bone growth, which would benefit astronauts on extended space missions, the elderly here on the ground, and other people immobilized by paralysis or bed rest.
Mars Odyssey Mission Status
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft performed its third trajectory correction maneuver last night to fine-tune its flight path for arrival at Mars next month. Odyssey will arrive at Mars at 0230 Universal time Oct. 24 (7:30 p.m. Pacific time Oct. 23).
The Challenges of Getting to Mars
The 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft was launched toward Mars on April 7, 2001, from Cape Canaveral; it will arrive at the red planet in just 48 days. 2001 Mars Odyssey is an orbiter carrying three scientific instruments designed to make global observations of Mars to improve our understanding of the planet’s climate and geologic history, including the search for liquid water and evidence of past life. The mission will extend across a full Martian year, or 29 Earth months. The image shows the process of aerobraking, or using the friction of the atmosphere to lower its orbit; this enables the spacecraft to carry less fuel. In the first of a four-part video series, Odyssey navigation team members explain the daily challenges of steering a spacecraft 93 million miles from Earth to Mars. Follow the link to go to the video…
Mars Probe Experiment Shut Down, Spacecraft OK
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, now 18.5 million kilometers (11.5 million miles) from Mars on its way to a rendezvous with the red planet on October 23, remains in overall good health. Flight controllers have turned off the Martian radiation environment experiment after the instrument did not respond during a downlink session last week. Following unsuccessful attempts to reset the radiation instrument, the mission manager and project officials have decided to form a team to further study the anomaly over the next several weeks and propose a course of action to recover the instrument following Mars orbit insertion on October 23.
Ames Completes Successful Test of Mars Airplane Prototype
Soaring gracefully down to Earth from a balloon floating 103,000 feet high above Oregon, a NASA prototype of an airplane that someday may fly over Mars successfully completed a high-altitude flight test August 9. Conducted at Oregon