2001 Mars Odyssey

Mission

Kind: Mars orbiter

State: Operational

Place: Mars

Operator: NASA / JPL

Date

Start:

Duration: Elapsed:18 years, 8 months and 22 days from launch18 years, 2 months and 5 days at Mars (6462 sols)En route: 6 months, 17 daysPrimary mission: 32 months (1007 sols)Extended mission: 15 years, 4 months and 4 days (5454 sols) elapsed

Mission Ending

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." - Jim Henson

Rocket

Rocket: Delta II 7925-9.5

Kind: NASA / JPL

Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin

Mass: 758 kilograms (1,671 lb)

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral SLC-17A

Flyby

"Requesting permission for flyby." Maverick - Top Gun

Orbit

Reference System: Areocentric

1º Orbit: Mars

Lander

"The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing." - Paul Theroux

2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation that future astronauts on Mars might experience. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Mars Science Laboratory, and previously the Mars Exploration Rovers and Phoenix lander, to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Odyssey was launched April 7, 2001, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and reached Mars orbit on October 24, 2001, at 02:30 UTC (October 23, 19:30 PDT, 22:30 EDT). By December 15, 2010, it broke the record for longest serving spacecraft at Mars, with 3,340 days of operation. As of 2019 October it is in a polar orbit around Mars with a semi-major axis of about 3,800 km or 2,400 miles. It has enough propellant to function until 2025.