NASA's Mars Odyssey Enters Orbit

maddmike writes "Nasa's Mars explorer Odyssey is scheduled to brake and orbit about Mars today at 7:30PDT. Among the mission's objectives are to understand Mars' climate and geological history and to search for signs of life sustaining environments including water. Main web site is at the JPL website." Update: 10/24 13:12 GMT by T : The BrownFury writes cites a Space.com summary which says "The Mars Odyssey spacecraft appears to have succeeded Tuesday night in one of the most tricky and critical parts of its missions by slipping into orbit around the Red Planet."

Comments

Cool!

[Bob McCown]

That means our cloaking technology was successful against those pesky aliens that have blasted last few probes.

Onward to planetary colonization!

What's Next....

[cybrpnk]

There are three instruments on Odyssey. One is a gamma spectrometer that will be able to map the presence of permafrost and subsurface ice - obviously important. A second is an infrared spectrometer - not only will it be able to make a geological survey map of the minerals on the surface, it will be able to locate "hot spots" on the surface where there might still be liquid water and perhaps even life. The third instrument is a radiation monitor that was supposed to measure the dose an astronaut would receiv on a Mars mission. It appears to be broken, one hopes not from excesive radiation exposure.....

Re:Why can't we just sned a KH11?

[Wyatt Earp]

Because a KH-11 is heavy.

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/xk h- 12.htm

14 tons for a KH-11, 18 tons for the Improved Crystal.

Niether the Americas, ESA or Proton have rockets with the throw-weight to chuck 18 tons of KH-11 to Mars.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/atlsiiib.htm
The Atlas III can launch 4,500 kg. to a Geosynchronous transfer trajectory

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/dellarge.htm
The Delta IV Large can launch 10,843 kg. to a Geosynchronous transfer

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ariane5.htm
The Ariane 5 can launch 6,800 kg. to a Geosynchronous transfer

Shuttle might do it - 24,000 kgs to LEO, but you'd have to have a big boster. Perhaps if Saturn hadn't been killed, or Energia. But right now no one has the rocket to send something like that to Mars.

Touching scene in mission control

[Rogerborg]

I was watching the mission control footage, when the satellite came out of Mars' shadow, two mission control geeks went to high five each other, and missed. That's NASA for you: nerding it old school. ;-)