Mars Odyssey Stories
NASA Orbiter Snaps Stunning Views of Mars Horizon
The Odyssey orbiter captured clouds and dust in the Red Planet’s skies, along with one of its two tiny moons. Astronauts often react with awe when they see the curvature of the Earth below the International Space Station. Now Mars…
Engineers Keep an Eye on Fuel Supply of NASA’s Oldest Mars Orbiter
Measuring the fuel supply on Odyssey, a decades-old spacecraft without a fuel gauge, is no easy task.
Science at Sunrise: Solving the Mystery of Frost Hiding on Mars
A new study using data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter may explain why Martian frost can be invisible to the naked eye and why dust avalanches appear on some slopes. Scientists were baffled last year when studying images of the…
Update: NASA Extends Exploration for 8 Planetary Science Missions
Editor’s Note: On May 26, 2022 NASA’s New Horizons mission’s second extended mission proposal was approved for implementation. In the two-year extended mission, New Horizons will conduct multi-disciplinary observations contributing to important science for NASA’s Planetary Science, Heliophysics and Astrophysics…
NASA’s Mars Fleet Lies Low With Sun Between Earth and Red Planet
The missions will continue collecting data about the Red Planet, though engineers back on Earth will stop sending commands to them until mid-October. NASA will stand down from commanding its Mars missions for the next few weeks while Earth and…
NASA’s Fermi Spots a Supernova’s ‘Fizzled’ Gamma-Ray Burst
On Aug. 26, 2020, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a pulse of high-energy radiation that had been racing toward Earth for nearly half the present age of the universe. Lasting only about a second, it turned out to be…
NASA’s Odyssey Orbiter Marks 20 Historic Years of Mapping Mars
For two decades, the longest-lived spacecraft at the Red Planet has helped locate water ice, assess landing sites, and study the planet’s mysterious moons. NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft launched 20 years ago on April 7, making it the oldest…
NASA Missions Unmask Magnetar Eruptions in Nearby Galaxies
On April 15, 2020, a brief burst of high-energy light swept through the solar system, triggering instruments on several NASA and European spacecraft. Now, multiple international science teams conclude that the blast came from a supermagnetized stellar remnant known as…
Three New Views of Mars’ Moon Phobos
Three new views of the Martian moon Phobos have been captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter. Taken this past winter and this spring, they capture the moon as it drifts into and out of Mars’ shadow. The orbiter’s infrared camera, the…
NASA’s Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars
NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land? A new paper published in Geophysical…