NASA announced that the Mars Odyssey space proble was taken out of the protective status called “safe mode” recovering its orientation toward Mars on Saturday, June 16, 2012.
The Mars Odyssey space probe entered safe mode on June 8, 2012 after its computer detected an unexpected movement in one of its reaction wheels. The spacecraft is equipped with three reaction wheels that allow it to adjust and maintain its orientation so an abnormal movement can be disastrous.
The problem was with only one of its reaction wheels so it wasn’t necessary to reboot the space probe Mars Odyssey’s computer. The safe mode allowed the reduction of activities and the spacecraft to be put into safety waiting to receive commands from mission control.
In the following days, the engineers and scientists in the mission control assessed that the reaction wheel that caused the problem isn’t anymore reliable so they carried out tests on the spare wheel the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has. The last week, the spare wheel was spinned up to 5,000 totations per minute in both directions.
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The Mars Odyssey spacecraft is also equipped with a thruster engin to change its orientation but this works with a fuel that’s available only until the tank is empty. The reaction wheels instead are powered by the energy produced by solar panels so they can operate as long as they work. The rotation of one of the wheels of in the spacecraft causes a rotation of the spacecraft itself in the opposite direction as a reaction, hence the name.
The Mars Odyssey space probe was launched on April 7, 2001 on a Delta II rocket and reached the orbit of Mars on October 24, 2001. The full name of the spacecraft is actually “2001 Mars Odyssey”, a tribute to the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Its original mission was to seek water and volcanic activity present or past on Mars.
The mission of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been extended a few times and now it’s observing in particular polar ice, clouds and dust storms to assess climate variations on Mars. It’s also used as a relay for communication with the Mars Rovers that operate on the surface.
This is therefore a probe that is now old which in fact already holds the record as the longest operating among the Martian probes. It’s normal that after so many years it may have some technical problem. In the coming days, the Mars Odyssey will resume all its normal activities and if the Mars Rover Curiosity lands regularly on the red planet in August among other things it will work as a relay for the communications with this new robot. That’s quite an accomplishment for this old space probe!
