Mars Odyssey Mission Status 19 Apr 2001

This morning flight controllers turned the Mars Odyssey
spacecraft and pointed the thermal emission imaging system
(THEMIS) instrument at the Earth and Moon to calibrate the
instrument. All calibration objectives were met.

Engineers are in the process of redesigning the
spacecraft’s cruise attitude after they noted temperature
readings that were higher than expected on a high-gain antenna
gimbal earlier this week. The cruise attitude points the
high-gain antenna toward Earth as the spacecraft travels
toward Mars.

Next week, the team will turn on the Martian radiation
environment experiment (MARIE) and prepare to transition to
the new cruise attitude.

Odyssey is currently 3,491,598 kilometers (2,169,574
miles) from Earth and traveling at a speed of 3.3 kilometers
per second (7,408 miles per hour) relative to Earth.

The Mars Odyssey mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington,
D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, Calif. The Odyssey spacecraft was built
by Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo.