NASA begins another MARS exploration mission

By Richard Stenger

CNN



(CNN) — Beginning a new chapter in Mars exploration, NASA on Saturday
launched a powerful new orbiter to scour the Red Planet for evidence of
underground water and geologic hot spots.



The $300 million Mars Odyssey should become the first spacecraft to visit
Mars since two disastrous failures in 1999.



Mars Odyssey will search for water, map surface minerals and measure
radiation levels — observations that could provide clues about possible
extraterrestrial life.



"Life on Earth was not a cosmic fluke but part of a broad
imperative," Ed Weiler, NASA deputy administrator, told reporters Friday.
"Mars is a lot like Earth. And billions of years ago it had some kind of
atmosphere and huge quantities of flowing water."



The spacecraft blasted off into clear morning skies aboard a Delta II rocket
from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It should reach Mars in October after a journey of
286 million miles (460 million km).

Joining another satellite

Odyssey will join another NASA satellite already orbiting the red planet.
Mars Global Surveyor has been circling Mars since 1997, snapping hundreds of
thousands of high-resolution pictures.



Surveyor's camera can spot details as small as 3 meters. The camera onboard
Odyssey cannot focus as well, but it will have the ability to "see"
much more than physical topography.

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The new orbiter is equipped with an infrared imaging camera that can
distinguish the mineral content of geologic features only 100 meters (110 yards)
across, compared to 3 km (1.9 miles) for a similar instrument on the Mars Global
Surveyor.



By spotting possible hot spots, Odyssey could help determine whether Mars
exhibited volcanic activity in the recent geological past. Odyssey also has a
gamma ray spectrometer, which can peer into the shallow subsurface of Mars to
measure elements, including hydrogen.



"We believe hydrogen may be the clue, the fingerprint, of where water
may be," said Jim Garvin, Mars program scientist.



Because hydrogen is probably present in the form of water ice, the
spectrometer is expected to measure permanent ground ice and how it changes with
the seasons, NASA said.



Odyssey also will help identify favorable landing spots for twin rovers that
NASA plans to launch in 2003. And it will relay radio communications between
Earth and the rovers and later probes.

Reeling from 1999 losses

The mission is the first since NASA revamped its Mars program, which suffered
the disastrous losses of an orbiter and lander less than three years ago.



In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter presumably burned up in the
martian atmosphere because propulsion engineers failed to convert English and
metric units.

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Three months later, its sibling spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander, likely
crashed because a software glitch shut off the descent engines prematurely,
sending it on a fatal plunge into the red planet.



NASA revised its Mars program after the mishaps, canceling numerous missions
over the next decade. Those that survived were given much higher budgets and
subjected to more critical review.



"We've strengthened communications, strengthened the processes. In
effect, it's back to the future. We're looking at what made missions successes
in the past," said Scott Hubbard, Mars program director.



NASA has no firm plans for a human mission to Mars. But one onboard
experiment will monitor martian radiation levels, checking possible hazards for
future colonists.