With apologies to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, ten years ago today — April 7, 2001 — the Mars Odyssey orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta-II rocket.
(Image from Mars Odyssey, “In Search of Landing Sites on Mars,” false-color-enhanced by NASA and JPL-Caltech. NASA image.)
Mars Odyssey was designed to produce high-resolution maps of Mars and to search for water on the red planet. In arrived at Mars in October 2001, and in December 2010 it became the longest-lived spacecraft operating in Martian orbit.
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