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The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgamesEARTHDATE: December 12, 2010
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REAL LIFE NEWS: THE MARTIAN LONG-SERVICE RECORDby HazedHats off to the Odyssey Orbiter, which has been in service around Mars for a very long time. On 15 December, it will clock up its 3,340th day - which means it will take the record for having worked longer at Mars than any other spacecraft in history. The record was previously held by Mars Global Surveyor, which did its stuff between September 11, 1997 and November 2, 2006. Odyssey's prime mission ended in 2004, but its working life was extended by NASA and it has continued to send data back to Earth for scientists to study, much of it coming from the onboard Thermal Emission Imaging System camera. The extra years of operation have allowed NASA to build up the highest-resolution maps covering the entire planet. You can read more about Odyssey's achievements, and see one of its pictures, here. |
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