Mars Odyssey Ready to Tackle Science Agenda

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Odyssey at January 21, 2002 12:00 PM

NASA’s Mars Odyssey is ready to start science duties as it circles the Red Planet. The spacecraft completed a set of aerobraking maneuvers January 11 following weeks of dipping in and out of Mars’ thin atmosphere in order to tighten its orbit around the planet. An upcoming and key event is deployment of Odyssey’s high-gain antenna. That equipment is crucial in relaying to Earth quantities of data to be gleaned by the spacecraft’s science instruments. The antenna is to be released and deployed with a motor-driven hinge. Release of the high-gain antenna is to occur after a final adjustment of Odyssey’s orbit takes place. That small adjustment is tagged an "orbit freeze" maneuver. This tweaking of Odyssey’s orbit is being done to avoid the remote chance it could smack into another orbiting spacecraft – the Mars Global Surveyor.