44 photos of the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft have been added to the 2001 Mars Odyssey website:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/orbiter/images.html

January 4 - Spacecraft arriving at Kennedy Space Center (8 Photos)
January 5 - Spacecraft uncrated in SAEF-2 (12 Photos)
January 9 - Solar Arrays are unfolded (8 Photos)
January 24 - Gamma Ray Spectrometer Installed (8 Photos)
January 29 - THEMIS Instrument Installed (8 Photos)

The 2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter is scheduled for launch on April 7, 2001, aboard a Delta 7925 rocket from Launch Pad 17-A, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will arrive at Mars on Oct. 20, 2001, for insertion into an initial elliptical capture orbit. Its final operational altitude will be a 250-mile-high, Sun-synchronous polar orbit. Mars Odyssey will spend two years mapping the planet's surface and measuring its environment.

The spacecraft arrived at the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility 2 at Kennedy Space Center on January 4, 2001, where it is undergoing final checkout and assembly. The orbiter will carry three science instruments: THEMIS, the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS), and the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE). The GRS instrument will achieve global mapping of the elemental composition of the surface and determine the abundance of hydrogen in the shallow subsurface. The MARIE instrument will characterize aspects of the near-space radiation environment with regards to the radiation-related risk to human explorers.

Ron Baalke