Mars Orbiter Carries Hopes for Redeeming Space Program

For the throngs peering skyward from the NASA causeway, it was a spectacular daytime launch. For geochemist William Boynton, it was the beginning of a promising science mission. But for Scott Hubbard, who oversees NASA’s troubled Mars program, the flawless launch of the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter was much more: It was a redemption.

“We are back in business,” said Hubbard, who has been presiding over the massive restructuring of the Mars program since the loss of two spacecraft in 1999.

“I’m relieved. I’m elated. I’ve been in an altered state of mind for a year,” said Hubbard, who hugged his emotional wife and wiped away a single tear after the launch. “So many things had to be done so this would work. I may even start sleeping again.”

The Boeing Delta II rocket carrying the spacecraft lifted cleanly off Launch Pad 17 at 11:02 a.m. during a one-second launch window and shot into cloudless blue skies. On the ground, teams of Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers and scientists who are running the $297-million mission watched as the rocket jettisoned its fuel tanks and streaked out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

“The odyssey begins,” said Scott Anderson, a JPL Mars scientist. “You go, girl!” shouted another.

The Odyssey orbiter will circle Mars for two years looking for traces of water or ice that might harbor life today or fossils from a time when life might have existed on the planet.

As soon as the rocket disappeared, the launch site crowd scrambled toward an 18-inch monitor that displayed video from aboard the rocket: A camera pointed downward showed Florida, and then the Earth, slipping away; another camera, facing upward, showed the ballet of the spacecraft pirouetting as it stabilized and then separated from its rocket.

“Seeing the spacecraft spin was one of the best parts of today,” said Ed Stone, who will soon be retiring as JPL’s director and who was here for his 15th, and final, launch. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever seen that,” he said, referring to the view from the top camera.

Though the launch is only the beginning of the mission, those at JPL, NASA headquarters and spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin in Denver sorely needed a clean win.

“If they’d had anything but a good day today, morale would have been a real problem,” said David Baltimore, who as president of Caltech oversees JPL. Baltimore traveled to Florida to view his first launch because, he said, “It’s such a high-profile mission.”

Lockheed Martin employees may have been the most nervous of those here. They built the two spacecraft that failed and are also facing layoffs.

“It means everything for us,” said Ben Clark, the company’s chief scientist. “Because we’re an industry contractor, we have to compete each time to get involved. We’re not going to get invited if we can’t show we can do it.”

The JPL team waited to celebrate until 11:56 a.m., when they received the first signal showing the spacecraft was working and on track and that the crucial solar panels had unfolded. As the signals flickered in from Australia, mission controllers broke into cheers and high fives.

“That felt pretty good,” said George Pace, an engineer who is managing the Odyssey mission for JPL and has been working nearly nonstop to prepare for launch since January. “I’m going to take a few days off.”

But the real JPL celebration will not come until after October, when the spacecraft is scheduled to begin orbiting Mars--the difficult portion of the mission, where the two previous losses occurred.

“Aerobraking and entering the atmosphere of Mars is not all that predictable,” said Firouz Naderi, who has been managing the Mars program at JPL for the past year. “Excitements are still ahead.”

At JPL headquarters in Pasadena, about 200 people gathered in front of a giant video screen to watch the launch--knowing what failure would mean for the lab.

“It’s very important that this work out,” said Jennifer Trosper, a JPL project engineer. “We failed with the last two. If we failed with this one there would be big, big changes in the Mars program.”

Nervousness soon gave way to euphoria; rocket scientists, it seems, never tire of watching a launch.

“Oh, this is cool,” said JPL scientist John Callas, project manager for the upcoming Mars rover mission.

Callas, so nervous just before the launch that he could hardly talk, was suddenly clenching his fist, smiling and watching a video feed showing pictures taken from the rocket looking down at Florida.

“What fantastic pictures,” he said as the rocket shed pieces of itself, its boosters tumbling off into the atmosphere as planned.

About 30 minutes after the launch, mission control centers at JPL and Lockheed Martin in Denver took control of the spacecraft.

Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator, was pleased, but a bit more cautious after he watched the launch in Florida.

“We won’t know if this is a success for six months and I won’t be truly happy until two years from now, when we’ve got all the data,” said Weiler, who had the difficult job of facing the press after the two earlier disasters. “Mars is a tough job. This isn’t a trip to Grandma’s house.”

Odyssey is carrying a suite of scientific instruments, many of them to aid NASA in its search for traces of water, precursor of life. An Arizona State University imaging system will map the planet to detect minerals within the Martian terrain, and to specifically seek minerals like hematite that might have formed in water.

A gamma ray spectrometer, separated from the spacecraft by a 20-foot-long boom, will examine gamma rays coming from the Martian surface to determine the elements on and under the surface. The team is seeking traces of hydrogen, which would suggest frozen water under the surface, and hunting for salts that could answer the controversial debate over whether much of Mars was once covered by an ocean. But they also hope to answer a very simple question: What is Mars made of?

Said Boynton, the planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who heads the experiment: “We really don’t even know the basics.”

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2001 Mars Odyssey Mission

The Mars Odyssey carries a suite of scientific instruments designed to map the chemical and mineralogical makeup

of Mars and provide information about potential radiation hazards for future human explorers.

Quick Facts

* Total cost: $297 million

* Earth-to-Mars distance at launch: 77.5 million miles

* Total distance traveled: 286 million miles

* Mars arrival date: Oct. 24, 2001

* Primary mapping period: Jan. 2002 to July 2004

The Mission

Launch and Liftoff: Solar array deploys about 36 minutes after launch.

Interplanetary Cruise Phase: Odyssey is scheduled to fire its thrusters a total of five times to adjust its flight path. Activities planned for the cruise phase include payload health and status checks, calibrations and data gathering. This period of travel from Earth to Mars will last about 200 days.

Mars Orbit: The spacecraft will fire its main engine to allow itself to be captured in an elliptical orbit around the planet.

Mapping Orbit: This phase will begin about 45 days after Odyssey is captured into orbit. Using the thermal emission imaging system, Odyssey will map the Martian surface to determine its chemical and mineralogical makeup. Data gathered will also provide vital information about potential radiation hazards for human explorers.

Science Relay: The orbiter will provide communication support for landers and rovers in the future.

Aerobraking: In order to transition from the elliptical orbit to its science orbit, Odyssey will slow itself by using frictional drag as it flies through the upper part of the planet’s atmosphere. This maneuver will take about a week.

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Times staff writer Kurt Streeter contributed to this story from Pasadena.