NASA MARS ODYSSEY (2001- 2010/2025)
Elysium Mons (13,900m / 13, 9km - 46,000 ft / 8,6 mi)
MARS
The Mountain
Elysium Mons (13,900m / 13, 9km - 46,000 ft / 8,6 mi) is a volcano on Mars located in the volcanic province Elysium, at 25.02°N 147.21°E, in the Martian eastern hemisphere. It stands about above the surrounding lava plains, and about 16 km (52,000 ft) above the Martian datum. Its diameter is about 240 km (150 mi), with a summit caldera about 14 km (8.7 mi) across. It is flanked by the smaller volcanoes Hecates Tholus to the northeast, and Albor Tholus to the southeast.
A 6.5 km diameter crater at 29.674 N, 130.799 E, in the volcanic plains to the northwest of Elysium Mons has been identified as a possible source for the nakhlite meteorites, a family of similar basaltic Martian meteorites with cosmogenic ages of about 10.7 Ma, suggesting ejection from Mars by a single impact event. This implies that Martian volcanism had slowed greatly by that point in history.
The Mission
NASA Mars Odyssey was launched April 7, 2001, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and reached Mars orbit on October 24, 2001, at 02:30 UTC (October 23, 19:30 PDT, 22:30 EDT). By December 15, 2010, it broke the record for longest serving spacecraft at Mars, with 3,340 days of operation. It is currently in a polar orbit around Mars with a semi-major axis of about 3,800 km or 2,400 miles. It has enough propellant to function until 2025.Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation that future astronauts on Mars might experience. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory, and previously the Phoenix lander to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
