2001 Mars Odyssey

2001 Mars Odyssey

Artist's impression of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft
Mission type	Mars orbiter
Operator	NASA / JPL
COSPAR ID	2001-013A
SATCAT no.	26734
Website	mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
Mission duration	Elapsed: 23 years and 22 days from launch 22 years, 6 months and 5 days at Mars (8003 sols) En route: 6 months, 17 days Primary mission: 32 months (1007 sols) Extended mission: 19 years, 8 months and 4 days (6995 sols) elapsed
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer	Lockheed Martin
Launch mass	725 kg[1]
Dry mass	376.3 kilograms (830 lb)
Power	750 W
Start of mission
Launch date	April 7, 2001, 15:02:22 (2001-04-07UTC15:02:22Z) UTC[2]
Rocket	Delta II 7925-9.5
Launch site	Cape Canaveral SLC-17A
Contractor	Boeing
End of mission
Last contact	Q4 2025 (planned)
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Areocentric
Regime	Sun-synchronous
Semi-major axis	3,793.4 km (2,357.1 mi)[3]
Eccentricity	0.0
Altitude	400 km (250 mi)[3]
Inclination	93.064°[3]
Period	2 hours[3]
RAAN	34.98°[3]
Argument of periareion	0°[3]
Mean anomaly	0°[3]
Epoch	October 19, 2002[3]
Mars orbiter
Orbital insertion	October 24, 2001, MSD 45435 12:21 AMT
Mars Exploration Program ← Mars Surveyor 2001 Mars Exploration Rover →

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.^[4] The data Odyssey obtains is intended to help answer the question of whether life once 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 Curiosity rover, 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 his and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.^[5][6]

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).^[7]

On May 28, 2002 (sol 210), NASA reported that Odyssey's GRS instrument had detected large amounts of hydrogen, a sign that there must be ice lying within a meter of the planet's surface, and proceeded to map the distribution of water below the shallow surface.^[8] The orbiter also discovered vast deposits of bulk water ice near the surface of equatorial regions.^[9]

By December 15, 2010, it broke the record for longest serving spacecraft at Mars, with 3,340 days of operation.^[10][11] Odyssey has also served as the primary means of communications for NASA's Mars surface explorers in the past decade, up to the Curiosity rover. It currently holds the record for the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, ahead of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (served 14 years^[12]) and the Mars Express (serving over 20 years), at 22 years, 6 months and 5 days. As of October 2019^[update] it is in a polar orbit around Mars with a semi-major axis of about 3,800 km or 2,400 miles. It is estimated to have enough propellant to function until the end of 2025.^[13]