Mars Odyssey Mission Status 9 May 2001

This morning, flight controllers for NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey
spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully tested the ability
of the high-gain communications antenna to send and receive commands. Since
launch, the spacecraft has been receiving commands over its low-gain antenna
and transmitting signals via its medium-gain antenna. Today’s test showed
the high-gain antenna is working well, and engineers will begin using that
link regularly at the end of the month.

Last Friday, May 4, engineers conducted a thruster calibration test
designed to measure the small velocity changes that occur when the
spacecraft fires its attitude control thrusters. Navigators report that the
test went extremely well and that the data are consistent with performance
that was predicted before launch.

Odyssey is currently about 9.5 million kilometers (5.8 million miles)
from Earth and traveling at a speed of about 30 kilometers per second (about
67,700 miles per hour) relative to the Sun.

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 in Pasadena. The Odyssey spacecraft
was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver.