Product category: Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: Wind River Systems | Subject: Mars Odyssey mission
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 13 November 2001
Wind River aids
NASA Mars Odyssey mission
Wind River has played a critical role in helping NASA take another step towards interplanetary space exploration with its contribution to the Mars Odyssey mission
Mars Odyssey, the latest NASA spacecraft to use Wind River technology, successfully entered orbit around the red planet on 24th October 2001 and took its first thermal infra-red images of the Martian southern hemisphere on Halloween. At present the Odyssey is orbiting Mars in an elliptical orbit every 18.5h at an altitude of 128km at its closest point.
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 13 November 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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At the farthest point Odyssey is orbiting at an altitude of 27,000km.
The thermal images capture the polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of -120C and show a wide angle view when the spacecraft was furthest away from the surface.
The image was taken as part of the calibration process for the instrument and shows nigh time temperatures of Mars demonstrating the 'night-vision' capabilities of the camera.
All aspects of the spacecraft are functioning as expected and in the coming weeks and months aero-braking manoeuvres will take place whereby the Odyssey will literally 'surf' the waves of the Martian atmosphere, bringing it out of the elliptical orbit to a circular orbit every 2h, at an altitude of approximately 400km.
Wind River's technology resides in the primary computer of the Odyssey where the control, command and data transfer work is done.
The Mars Odyssey is one of several missions to Mars in which Wind River and NASA have collaborated.
The company was previously involved with the development and successful deployment of the Mars Pathfinder mission, to name one, which landed on the surface of the red planet on 4th July 1997 and included the first commercial off-the-shelf operating system to be deployed in a mission to another planet through its use of Wind River's VxWorks RTOS.
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