Mission
Odyssey has served as the primary means of communications for NASA’s Mars surface explorers in the past decade and will continue that role for the Curiosity rover. About 85% of images and other data from NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have reached Earth via communications relay by Odyssey. Odyssey continues to receive transmissions from the surviving rover, Opportunity, every day. The orbiter helped analyze potential landing sites for the rovers and performed the same task for NASA's Phoenix mission, which landed on Mars in May, 2008. Odyssey aided NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in March 2006, by monitoring atmospheric conditions during months when the newly arrived orbiter used aerobraking to alter its orbit into the desired shape.
On September 30, 2008 (sol 2465)the spacecraft altered its orbit to gain better sensitivity for its infrared mapping of Martian minerals. The new orbit eliminated the use of the gamma ray detector, due to the potential for overheating the instrument at the new orbit.
NASA has approved a fourth two-year extended mission, through August 2012, to allow for the observation of year-to-year differences in phenomena like polar ice, clouds, and dust storms, as well as a much more sensitive mapping of Martian minerals. A fifth extended mission (to July 2014) is considered likely in light of Curiosity's successful August 2012 landing. The orbiter contains enough propellant to operate at least until 2015. In 2010, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated that Odyssey could continue operating until at least about 2016 and "perhaps even well beyond".
The payload's MARIE radiation experiment stopped taking measurements after a large solar event bombarded the Odyssey spacecraft on October 28, 2003. Engineers believe the most likely cause is that a computer chip was damaged by a solar particle smashing into the MARIE computer board.
One of the orbiter's three flywheels failed in June 2012. However, Odyssey's design included a fourth flywheel, a spare carried against exactly this eventuality. The spare was spun up and successfully brought into service. Since July 2012, Odyssey has been back in full, nominal operation mode following three weeks of 'safe' mode on remote maintenance.
Read more about this topic: 2001 Mars Odyssey
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)