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Planetary News: 2001 Mars Odyssey (2004)

Mars Odyssey Orbits into Overtime as NASA Extends Mission

By A.J.S. Rayl
26 August 2004

Mars Odyssey orbited into overtime and extended duty yesterday after completing a prime mission that discovered vast supplies of buried water ice in the shallow subsurface of the planet, mapped surface textures and minerals to characterize the geology, and measured the radiation environment to determine the health hazards future human explorers will encounter at there.

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"Odyssey has accomplished all of its mission-success criteria," Philip Varghese, project manager for the mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) stated in an official NASA release.

2001 Mars Odyssey roared into space aboard a Delta II rocket at 11:02 a.m., Eastern Time, April 7, 2001 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It arrived at Mars on October 24, 2001, and began examining the planet in detail with a powerful suite of instruments in January 2002.

The mission was named after 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick film of the Arthur C. Clarke story that inspired a generation to embrace a future where travelers on their way to other planets could phone home from space hotels via live television links, and in all its accomplishments, the Martian orbiter has lived up to the honor bringing that kind of science fiction fantasy one small step closer to reality.

Odyssey was the first spacecraft to carry Proximity-1, a universal protocol for standardizing communications techniques for handling space data, developed by ESA, France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), and NASA under the auspices of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), an international partnership of national space agencies. Subsequently, Mars Express/Beagle 2, and Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, have each been equipped with Proximity-1. That technology not only opened the technological door for them to 'talk' with one another, but became the first international, interplanetary communications network at Mars.

While the plan had always been for Odyssey to continue on past its primary mission to serve as a communication relay for the rovers, if needed, and conduct additional research, officials at NASA headquarters announced just this week that the space agency had approved an extended mission for the orbiter through September 2006.

"This extension gives us another Martian year [about 23 months] to build on what we have already learned," said Jeff Plaut, project scientist for Odyssey. "One goal is to look for climate change. During the prime mission we tracked dramatic seasonal changes, such as the comings and goings of polar ice, clouds and dust storms. Now, we have begun watching for year-to-year differences at the same time of year."

The spacecraft carries three research systems: a camera system made up of infrared and visible-light sensors; a spectrometer suite with a gamma ray spectrometer, a neutron spectrometer and a high-energy neutron detector; and a radiation environment detector.

Within a few short weeks after the science mapping campaign began, the team announced a major discovery -- the gamma ray and neutron instruments had detected an abundance of hydrogen just under the surface in Mar's south polar region. Researchers, generally, are interpreting the hydrogen as frozen water, and there is, they say, enough of it within about three feet [one meter] of the surface, that if the ice were melted, it would fill Lake Michigan a couple times.

If that wasn't enough, as summer came to northern Mars and the north polar covering of frozen carbon dioxide shrank, Odyssey found abundant frozen water in the north, too.
Odyssey's other significant accomplishments include:

  • The discovery -- through infrared mapping -- that the mineral olivine is widespread, something that indicates the environment has been quite dry, because water exposure alters olivine into other minerals.
  • Findings that indicate the amount of frozen water in some relatively warm regions on Mars is too great to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere, suggesting that Mars may be going through a period of climate change, evidenced perhaps by features visible near small, young gullies in some Odyssey images that may be slowly melting snowpacks left over from a Martian ice age.
  • The determination that radiation levels around Mars, from solar flares and cosmic rays, are two to three times higher than around Earth, in the first experiment sent to Mars specifically in preparation for human missions.
  • Completing the most detailed complete global maps of Mars ever, with daytime and nighttime infrared images obtained by its camera system at a resolution of 328 feet [100 meters].

Meanwhile, Odyssey's support of the Mars Exploration Program has been invaluable. Even before the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity were anywhere near to launching, the orbiter helped analyze the potential landing sites for the robot geologists. Since the rovers touched down on mars last January, some 85 percent of the images and other data they have acquired have reached Earth via relay through Odyssey, which continues to receive transmissions from both rovers every day.

In addition, Odyssey is currently scoping out potential landing sites for the upcoming Phoenix mission, scheduled to land on Mars in 2008, and will also be enlisted to aid Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), due to reach Mars in March 2006, by monitoring atmospheric conditions during months when the newly arrived orbiter uses calculated dips into the atmosphere to alter its orbit into the desired shape. Odyssey used the same dips into the atmosphere, known as aerobraking, to shape its orbit during the initial months after it reached Mars.

"We've accomplished everything we set out to do, and more," summed up Odyssey Mission Manager Robert Mase, of JPL. Although an unusually powerful solar flare in October 2003 knocked out the radiation environment instrument, Odyssey is otherwise in excellent health. The spacecraft has enough fuel onboard to keep operating through this decade and the next at current consumption rates. The mission extension, with a budget of $35 million, essentially doubles the science payoff from Odyssey, according to the release, for less than one-eighth of the mission's original $297 million cost.