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NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft, still en route to the Red Planet, is already
running into technical trouble. Mission controllers shut down a
radiation-measuring instrument on 17 August. The device was collecting data on
radiation in space, to assess how hazardous it would be for human exploration of
Mars. But it stopped responding after two months of operation. After initial
efforts failed to revive the instrument, managers decided to concentrate on
getting the spacecraft into a stable orbit when it reaches Mars on 23 October,
and worry about the radiation instrument later. Two other instruments, a thermal
imaging system and a gamma-ray spectrometer, are working as planned.