SPACE.com -- Odyssey Managers Plan Aerobraking by Halloween

Two dramatically different faces of our Red Planet neighbor appear in these comparison images showing how a global dust storm engulfed Mars with the onset of Martian spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

This picture of Mars was taken when the planet was near its closest approach to Earth for 2001 (an event called opposition); at that point the disk of Mars was fully illuminated as seen from Earth because Mars was exactly opposite the Sun.

When the Hubble Space Telescope photographed Mars in early September, the storm had already been raging across the planet for nearly two months obscuring all surface features.

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	Odyssey Managers Plan Aerobraking by Halloween By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 11:00 am ET 12 October 2001

odyssey_aerobrake_update_011012

Odyssey's aerobraking around Mars could be a trick or treat event.

If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will begin dipping into the Martian atmosphere about a week after the probe is inserted into Mars orbit -- that is, around Halloween.

Mars' Perfect Storm

A Dust Storm Engulfs Mars
This MGS animation depicts the pace of the spread of the global dust storm on Mars. Beginning in the Hellas Basin in May of this year, the storm gathered in intensity and spread north and east. The storm eventually swallows the planet.

MGS Spies a Martian Dust Storm
This animation represents atmospheric data from the Mars Global Surveyor's Thermal Emission Spectrograph. As the dust clouds grow thicker, they absorb more warmth from the sun and raising the temperature of the atmosphere.

Massive Mars Dust Storm Has Odyssey Mission Managers Watching: A dusty welcome mat is out for NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, now less than two weeks away from dropping into orbit around the red planet. [READ MORE]

Data gleaned by the already-orbiting Mars Global Surveyor is set to help Odyssey snuggle up into a correct science orbit. "We may want to 'pop up' if a storm appears and spreads quickly. We always want an orbit that will not decay and plunge us into Mars before we can do a maneuver," said Steve Saunders, JPL Mars Odyssey Project Scientist.

Engineers at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado -- builders of the NASA Mars Odyssey spacecraft -- are weather watchers too.

How a dust storm shakes and bakes the Martian atmosphere, as well as impact the safety of the Mars craft is "a balancing act that you perform around the planet," said Wayne Sidney, spacecraft engineer on the Lockheed Martin operations team for Odyssey.

"You don't want to go too slow that you can't complete the aerobraking maneuvers in time. You don't want to go so hard and run the risk of a blooming atmosphere and damage the spacecraft because it gets overheated," Sidney told SPACE.com.

Bob Berry, Lockheed Martin's 2001 Mars Odyssey Program Manager, said that the most vulnerable part of the spacecraft during aerobraking is the vehicle's solar array. "The rest of the spacecraft is fairly immune to aerobraking, which is a rapid heat pulse. Every orbit we'll be looking at what kind of heating rate we see. We'll be continuously monitoring the solar array temperature," he said.