14 DAY TRIAL // Mission controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, announce that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was finally returned to active duty on June 25, after suffering a glitch that sent it into a protective safe mode on June 8.
The vehicle has been operating in orbit around the Red Planet for more than 11 years, providing invaluable data on our neighboring world's surface and atmosphere. It also plays an important role in relaying data produced by the rover Opportunity back to Earth.
The June 8 error occurred when one of the three primary reaction wheels the machine uses to determine its position in space malfunctioned for a few minutes. In order to ensure that no additional errors take place, the orbiter placed itself in a safe mode, suspending all but basic operations.
Luckily, engineers who built the spacecraft had the foresight to install backup reaction wheels. The issue for the JPL team was determining whether these instruments could still be safely activated more than a decade after the orbiter arrived at Mars.
It took the team two weeks to conduct the necessary tests and preparatory activities, before the command to turn on one of the backup reaction wheels could be sent out. The operation was a success, and Mars Odyssey exited the safe mode on June 25.
“Odyssey is now back in full, nominal operation mode using the replacement wheel,” explains Lockheed Martin Space Systems (LMSS) Mars Odyssey lead engineer, Steve Sanders. LMSS and JPL teams cooperate in taking constant care of this precious spacecraft.
Yesterday, June 27, the satellite again started receiving science data from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity, itself a veteran of space exploration. The small robot has been driving across the surface of Mars since January 2004.
The continuation of MER, a JPL-managed mission as well, for so long is partially owed to the fact that Opportunity no longer needs to contact NASA's Deep Space Network antennas directly. This saves the rover a lot of power, which is then used for driving, drilling or conducting sample studies.
JPL manages a number of space exploration missions for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, at the agency's Headquarters, in Washington DC. The lab is itself managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena.