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What a year this has been for the Mars Odyssey team!
The excitement of launch last April 7, the arrival at Mars, the long,
sometimes tedious aerobraking concluded so successfully, the beginning
of the mapping phase ....
The detailed pictures the camera system is taking, letting scientists
get closer and closer to Mars' mysteries ....
The evidence from the gamma ray spectrometer showing more
hydrogen in Mars' southern hemisphere than was known before ....
The drama of the martian radiation environment experiment - as it
turned out, the instrument was just taking a long nap ....
Anniversary Toasts From the Odyssey Team
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Roger Gibbs
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"We have an A-plus spacecraft," said Roger Gibbs,
Odyssey project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"Everything is going smoothly and we're looking forward to
another great year."
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| Bob Berry |
Bob Berry, Lockheed Martin Astronautics Odyssey program
manager, said, "The performance of the spacecraft and the
spacecraft team has been virtually flawless during cruise, orbit
insertion and aerobraking. Now it's payoff time and we're ecstatic to
finally start seeing the fruits of our labor - great science."
He added, "Early results are amazing and the team is
looking forward to Odyssey adding another chapter in our Mars
book of knowledge."
Still early in the mapping mission, Odyssey has already begun to
return surprising new views of the red planet.
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| Dr. Steve Saunders |
"Odyssey's unique instrument set is working nearly
perfectly," said JPL's Odyssey project scientist Dr. Steve
Saunders. "We are getting new insights into the physical and
chemical makeup of Mars."
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