This infographic highlights simply how a lot information and what number of pictures NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has collected in its 23 years of operation across the Purple Planet. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s longest-lived Mars robotic is about to mark a brand new milestone on June 30: 100,000 journeys across the Purple Planet since launching 23 years in the past. Throughout that point, the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has been mapping minerals and ice throughout the Martian floor, figuring out touchdown websites for future missions, and relaying information to Earth from NASA’s rovers and landers.
Scientists just lately used the orbiter’s digicam to take a shocking new picture of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano within the photo voltaic system. The picture is a part of a unbroken effort by the Odyssey staff to offer high-altitude views of the planet’s horizon. (The primary of those views was printed in late 2023.) Much like the angle of Earth astronauts get aboard the Worldwide House Station, the view permits scientists to be taught extra about clouds and airborne mud on Mars.
Taken on March 11, the latest horizon picture captures Olympus Mons in all its glory. With a base that sprawls throughout 373 miles (600 kilometers), the defend volcano rises to a top of 17 miles (27 kilometers).
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured this single picture of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano within the photo voltaic system, on March 11, 2024. Apart from offering an unprecedented view of the volcano, the picture helps scientists examine totally different layers of fabric within the ambiance, together with clouds and dirt. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
“Usually we see Olympus Mons in slim strips from above, however by turning the spacecraft towards the horizon we will see in a single picture how giant it looms over the panorama,” stated Odyssey’s challenge scientist, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “Not solely is the picture spectacular, it additionally supplies us with distinctive science information.”
Along with providing a freeze body of clouds and dirt, such pictures, when taken throughout many seasons, can provide scientists a extra detailed understanding of the Martian ambiance.
A bluish-white band on the backside of the ambiance hints at how a lot mud was current at this location throughout early fall, a interval when mud storms sometimes begin kicking up. The purplish layer above that was probably because of a combination of the planet’s pink mud with some bluish water-ice clouds. Lastly, towards the highest of the picture, a blue-green layer might be seen the place water-ice clouds attain up about 31 miles (50 kilometers) into the sky.
Laura Kerber, deputy challenge scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, explains how and why the spacecraft in Might 2023 captured a view of the Purple Planet much like the Worldwide House Station’s view of Earth. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
How they took the image
Named after Arthur C. Clarke’s basic science-fiction novel “2001: A House Odyssey,” the orbiter captured the scene with a heat-sensitive digicam referred to as the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which Arizona State College in Tempe constructed and operates. However as a result of the digicam is supposed to look down on the floor, getting a horizon shot takes further planning.
By firing thrusters situated across the spacecraft, Odyssey can level THEMIS at totally different components of the floor and even slowly roll over to view Mars’ tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos.
The latest horizon imaging was conceived as an experiment a few years in the past through the landings of NASA’s Phoenix mission in 2008 and Curiosity rover in 2012. As with different Mars landings earlier than and after these missions touched down, Odyssey performed an essential position relaying information because the spacecraft barreled towards the floor.
To relay their important engineering information to Earth, Odyssey’s antenna needed to be aimed towards the newly arriving spacecraft and their touchdown ellipses. Scientists have been intrigued once they seen that positioning Odyssey’s antenna for the duty meant that THEMIS could be pointed on the planet’s horizon.
“We simply determined to show the digicam on and see the way it regarded,” stated Odyssey’s mission operations spacecraft engineer, Steve Sanders of Lockheed Martin House in Denver. Lockheed Martin constructed Odyssey and helps conduct day-to-day operations alongside the mission leads at JPL. “Based mostly on these experiments, we designed a sequence that retains THEMIS’s field-of-view centered on the horizon as we go across the planet.”
The key to an extended house odyssey
What’s Odyssey’s secret to being the longest frequently lively mission in orbit round a planet apart from Earth?
“Physics does a number of the laborious work for us,” Sanders stated. “Nevertheless it’s the subtleties we now have to handle repeatedly.”
These variables embody gasoline, solar energy, and temperature. To make sure Odyssey makes use of its gasoline (hydrazine fuel) sparingly, engineers must calculate how a lot is left for the reason that spacecraft would not have a gasoline gauge. Odyssey depends on solar energy to function its devices and electronics. This energy varies when the spacecraft disappears behind Mars for about quarter-hour per orbit. And temperatures want to remain balanced for all of Odyssey’s devices to work correctly.
“It takes cautious monitoring to maintain a mission going this lengthy whereas sustaining a historic timeline of scientific planning and execution—and revolutionary engineering practices,” stated Odyssey’s challenge supervisor, Joseph Hunt of JPL. “We’re trying ahead to amassing extra nice science within the years forward.”
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NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter captures large volcano, nears 100,000 orbits (2024, June 27)
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