NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft, the longest-running mission at Mars, circled the Crimson Planet for the 100,000th time right now, the mission staff introduced in a press release.To have a good time the milestone, the area company launched an intricate panorama of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano within the photo voltaic system; Odyssey captured the view in March. The volcano’s base sprawls 373 miles (600 kilometers) close to the Martian equator whereas it soars 17 miles (27 kilometers) into the planet’s skinny air. Earlier this month, astronomers found ephemeral morning frost coating the volcano’s high for a number of hours day-after-day, providing recent insights into how ice from the poles circulates all through the parched world.In Odyssey’s newest picture of the volcano, the bluish-white band seen grazing Olympus Mons exhibits the quantity of mud floating within the Martian air when the picture was taken, in response to NASA. The skinny coat of purple simply above seemingly hints at a mix of atmospheric mud with bluish water-ice clouds. The blue-green layer on the top-edge of the world marks the place water-ice clouds attain up about 30 miles (48 kilometers) into the Martian sky, scientists say.To seize the newest panorama, scientists commanded Odyssey to slowly rotate such that its digicam pointed towards the Martian horizon, capturing views much like the type Worldwide House Station dwellers take of Earth.Associated: Big Mars mountain Olympus Mons might as soon as have been a volcanic island”Usually we see Olympus Mons in slender strips from above, however by turning the spacecraft towards the horizon we will see in a single picture how massive it looms over the panorama,” Jeffrey Plaut, who’s Odyssey’s challenge scientist on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, mentioned within the latest information launch. “Not solely is the picture spectacular, it additionally supplies us with distinctive science information.”By snapping comparable photographs at completely different instances through the yr, scientists can research how the Martian environment adjustments over the planet’s 4 seasons, which final from 4 to seven months every. Breaking area information, the newest updates on rocket launches, skywatching occasions and extra!Scientists say the groundwork for the newest picture started as early as 2008, when one other NASA mission named Phoenix landed on Mars. When Odyssey, which served as a communication hyperlink between the lander and Earth, pointed its antenna on the lander, scientists observed its digicam was capable of view Mars’ horizon.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. (Picture credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)”We simply determined to show the digicam on and see the way it regarded,” mentioned Steve Sanders, who serves as Odyssey’s mission operations spacecraft engineer at Lockheed Martin House in Denver, Colorado. “Primarily based on these experiments, we designed a sequence that retains [the camera’s] field-of-view centered on the horizon as we go across the planet.”The Odyssey mission launched in April 2001 and is managed by JPL. It was NASA’s first profitable mission to Mars after a pair of failures two years earlier. In 1998, the Mars Local weather Orbiter reportedly burned up in Mars’ environment after mission engineers combined up translations between two measurement programs. A yr later, the Mars Polar Lander smashed onto the Martian floor because of its engine abruptly shutting off previous to landing. Odyssey was subsequently extensively seen as a mission of redemption.Odyssey slid into an orbit round Mars in October 2001, and has since revealed beforehand hidden water-ice reservoirs simply beneath the planet’s floor, which can be inside attain of future Mars astronauts. The spacecraft additionally mapped huge swaths of the planet’s floor, together with its craters, which have helped astronomers decode Mars’ historical past.The spacecraft’s latest milestone of 100,000 orbits means it has lined over 1.4 billion miles (2.2 billion kilometers). The sun-powered spacecraft doesn’t have a gas gauge, so the mission staff depends on their math abilities to estimate leftover gas that retains the 23-year-old mission operating. “Physics does plenty of the exhausting work for us,” mentioned Sanders. “However it’s the subtleties we’ve to handle repeatedly.”Current calculations counsel Odyssey has about 9 kilos (4 kilograms) of propellant remaining, which is enough to final the legacy mission till the tip of 2025.”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,” mentioned Joseph Hunt, Odyssey’s challenge supervisor at JPL. “We’re wanting ahead to gathering extra nice science within the years forward.”