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Mars Odyssey Begins Overtime

Posted by timothy on from the time-and-a-half dept.

thhamm writes "NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter begins working overtime today after completing a prime mission that discovered vast supplies of frozen water, ran a safety check for future astronauts, and mapped surface textures and minerals all over Mars, among other feats. An extended Mission until 2006 has been approved, and I hope it will last that long, maybe doing more safety checks for astronauts :)"

6 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow must have been gone for a long time by noselasd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mars Rovers != Mars Odyssey.

    Ice on Mars
    Odyssey Mission to Mars

  2. Re:Next stop, South Polar region? by thhamm · · Score: 5, Informative

    they tried this already, with the Mars Polar Lander. but they lost it.

    dont know if they will try again though.

  3. Re:Wow must have been gone for a long time by snake_dad · · Score: 4, Informative
    The fact that Mars has frozen water is one of the biggest discoveries of Odyssey. That is great to know, but it doesn't tell you much, only that a lot of water is currently on Mars in a frozen state.

    The rovers' task is to find out how exactly that water influenced Mars in the past (and maybe even present). Long lasting huge oceans? Short wet periods? Or maybe only moist periods, not really wet at all? These science results will then be used to give a future mission a better chance of finding life, or proof of past life. If there ever was life on Mars, of course.

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  4. yay for Odyssey! by Guano_Jim · · Score: 5, Informative

    Odyssey was launched in 2001... here's the mission timeline for more details.

    The cute little bugger looks like this.

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    3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
  5. Re:intermediaries for human travel. by kippy · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to Chris McKay from NASA they will be. He's a big terraforming proponent and he outlined a near future mission in which a rover will scoop up some dirt into a bell jar, and they will attempt to grow a mustard plant. He said they'll probably have to do it on the moon first for political reasons but it's on the works.

    I don't have a link of anything but he gave this talk at the Mars Soceity's convention last week.

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    Blaze a trail to the New World
  6. NASA kills old probes early by peter303 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Both the Jupiter Gallileo and Venus Magellan projects went triple their design lifespans. However, they could have gone even longer, had NASA not canned them. Both were getting "creaky": insufficient propellant to do much, and instruments breaking down. Plus it costs a fair amount of money- up to 30% of the original mission cost per year- for a slice of the Deep Space Network and scientist to run and analyze the data.
    We'll probably see this debate about the Mars Rovers if they survive into 2005. Both are already 2.5x their design lifetimes, have some instrument failures (a sick wheel motor, a dead spectrograph), and are tying up a couple hundred engineer and scientists full time.