OT: Mars Odyssey ist im Mars-Orbit

[Andre Wulff]

Die Sonde ist im Orbit. Sorry für das OT, aber vielleicht interessiert es Euch.

The United States returned to Mars tonight as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey fired
its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time and was captured into orbit around
the red planet.
At 7:55 p.m. Pacific time, flight controllers at the Deep Space Network
station in Goldstone, Calif., and Canberra, Australia, picked up the first
radio signal from the spacecraft as it emerged from behind the planet Mars.
"Early information indicates everything went great," said Matt Landano, the
Odyssey project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
"The orbit insertion burn went off just as we planned and we will now begin
the three-month long aerobraking phase."
Through tonight and the early morning hours tomorrow, the flight team will
be analyzing the information they are receiving from Odyssey. This will help
them evaluate the health and status of the spacecraft and determine the
precise orbit geometry.
Tonight's firing of the main engine slowed the spacecraft's speed and
allowed it to be captured by Mars' gravity into an egg-shaped elliptical
orbit around the planet. In the weeks and months ahead, the spacecraft will
repeatedly brush against the top of the atmosphere in a process called
aerobraking. By using atmospheric drag on the spacecraft, flight controllers
will reduce the long, highly elliptical orbit into a shorter, 2-hour
circular orbit of approximately 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) altitude
for the mission's science data collection.
"Orbit insertion is our single most critical event during the mission, and
we are glad it's behind us," said David A. Spencer, Odyssey's mission
manager at JPL. "But we cannot rest on our laurels. The aerobraking phase
will be a demanding, around-the-clock operation, and it requires the flight
team to react as the atmosphere of Mars changes."
The aerobraking phase is scheduled to begin on Friday, October 26.
JPL manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. Principal investigators at Arizona State
University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson, and NASA's Johnson
Space Center, Houston, Texas, operate the science instruments. Lockheed
Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., is the prime contractor for the project,
and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted
jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. NASA's Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Va., will provide aerobraking support to JPL's navigation team
during mission operations.