Odyssey's First Picture Released, Exceeds Expectations

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Odyssey at October 31, 2001 12:00 PM

The first image of Mars from NASA's Odyssey spacecraft was released today, showing a strip of the Red Planet as seen by the craft's infrared camera and showing mission managers that the camera works as planned. The camera, one of two onboard Odyssey, measures heat instead of visible light. "The image exceeded our expectations," said Greg Mehall, lead engineer for the instrument at Arizona State University. "Everything looked very, very good. The instrument's health and telemetry looked good."