Oct 23 2001
From The Space Library
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft maneuvered into Mars’s orbit after a six-month, 286 million-mile (460 million-kilometer) voyage from Earth. Newspapers described the event as a major success for NASA, which had lost three previous spacecraft destined for Mars during the years from 1993 to 1999. NASA planned for Odyssey to orbit Mars for two and one-half years, mapping the mineral composition of Mars and searching for evidence of water ice beneath the planet’s surface. Toward the end of Odyssey’s orbital reconnaissance mission, the spacecraft would also function as a communications satellite for two robotic landers that NASA planned to launch to Mars in 2003. (Mark Carreau, “Odyssey Slips into Orbit, Breaks String of Failures,” Houston Chronicle, 24 October 2001; New York Times, “At Last a Success on a Mars Mission,” 24 October 2001.)
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