Craft Gives NASA a Window Into Mars--and a Needed Victory

An exultant NASA boasted Wednesday that it “hit a bull’s-eye” after its Mars Odyssey spacecraft slipped flawlessly into orbit around the Red Planet.

The space agency’s two previous Mars missions, both in 1999, were humiliating failures.

“This embodies the American spirit. We showed we could win after being slammed a few times,” retiring NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, drawing a comparison to America’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“Hundreds and hundreds of things had to go right, and they did,” project manager Matt Landano said in Pasadena.

Odyssey fired its engine late Tuesday to reduce its speed and place it in an 18 1/2-hour oval orbit, well within the target period of 20 or fewer hours. It had come within half a mile of its target arrival point over Mars’ north pole after a six-month flight of more than a quarter-billion miles, officials said.

“The navigation team was challenged to hit a bull’s-eye with this mission, and we did that,” lead navigator Bob Mase said.

A problem with the engine firing would have allowed the spacecraft to hurtle past the planet, dooming the $297-million mission. The spacecraft will study the makeup of Mars and search for frozen reservoirs of water.

Tension mounted at JPL among the scientists and engineers when the signal from space was delayed a few minutes.

“I was worried. I was getting really worried then,” Landano said.

Odyssey’s elliptical orbit will be gradually adjusted to a circular path and lowered to an altitude of 250 miles above the surface by a process called aerobraking, dipping it into the outer fringes of the Martian atmosphere. It should reach its final two-hour orbit in late January.

Odyssey is expected to begin its primary mission in January, when it will use various scientific instruments to study the chemical and mineral composition of the red planet. Scientists will be looking carefully to detect the presence of hydrogen, in the form of ice, on the Martian surface.

Scientists who have studied images taken of that surface believe they have seen evidence that water once flowed there, carving deep channels and canyons.

Odyssey is also expected to serve as a radio relay and provide communication support for upcoming missions designed to send landers and rovers to Mars. Goldin said those missions would eventually pave the way for humans to land on the planet.

Providing that the mission continues to succeed, it will significantly contribute to the science and communication infrastructure for future Mars exploration programs, project scientist Steve Saunders said.

Fewer than one-third of the 30 missions sent to Mars by the United States and other countries since 1960 have succeeded.

NASA’s Mars Observer disappeared as it neared the planet in 1993, probably because of a fuel system explosion. In 1999, a mix-up between English and metric units in calculating trajectory put the Climate Orbiter too close to Mars, causing it to burn up in the atmosphere. The Polar Lander vanished three months later, probably because a software error caused it to plunge to the surface.

Goldin, whose legacy will include the “faster, better, cheaper” policy often blamed for the failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter, said he is proud of the team for undertaking the mission under growing pressure to succeed with the Mars project.

“They checked and rechecked, and the failure caused them to pay attention to things they had ignored before,” Goldin said.