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Search For Water Puts Probe on Orbital Fast Track
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 04:23 pm ET
12 January 2001
ET
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mars_odyssey_ready_010115 WASHINGTON -- NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey has arrived at its destination -- not the cold, harsh climes of the Red Planet, but warm, sandy and sunny Florida. Airlifted from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived in Florida late last week, safely tucked inside an Air Force C-17 cargo airplane. 
| Mars Odyssey arrives in Florida. |
From the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center, the interplanetary probe was then transported to a final assembly and checkout facility on-site. Specialists are ready to install two of Odyssey’s three science instruments, attach the spacecraft’s three-panel solar array and perform numerous checks of the probe. Later in the campaign to ready Odyssey for its trek to Mars, it will be fueled and then mated to an upper-stage of a Delta 2 booster. Odyssey was built for NASA by Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, is managing the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission. Making it to Mars The window for lofting the 2001 Mars Odyssey opens on April 7, the first day of a 21-day launch opportunity. Rocketing from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, the spacecraft will chalk up seven months of flight. It will arrive at the mysterious world on October 20, 2001. By that time, Odyssey will have crossed more than 400 million miles (644 million kilometers) of "intervening void" to arrive at the Red Planet Once in orbit about Mars, the spacecraft will conduct a two-year mission to map the planet’s surface and measure its environment. Total cost of the mission is $300 million.The Mars-circling spacecraft is tasked to find out what Mars is made of, detect water and spot shallow buried ice, as well as study the radiation environment surrounding the planet. That data can help assess potential health risks to future human explorers.The 2001 Mars Odyssey will tote to Mars three science instruments: The Thermal Emission Imaging Systems (THEMIS), a Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) and a Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE). A special Web cam focused on technicians working on the 2001 Mars Odyssey is available at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/2001/orbiter/webcam.html George Pace, JPL Odyssey Project Manager, said the spacecraft arrived in Florida safe and sound. "We've unpacked it, inspected and cleaned it, and started our electrical testing. The first test has been successful. Looks like we've had no major problems with the shipment," he told SPACE.com. Pace said a full set of testing is scripted for the probe over the next month and a half. A team of engineers are to re-integrate two instruments on Odyssey, the GRS which arrived last week, and the THEMIS instrument that arrives at the end of January, he said. "Things are going well, but we've got a lot of work to do," Pace said.
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