Mars Odyssey in safe mode, Will not see much MER data until back online Options

[Floyd]

Steve Squyres reports in Mission Update

December 7, 2006

A very quick update: We just learned this morning that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has gone into "safe mode". This is something that can happen when there's a glitch of some sort on board the spacecraft... it puts itself into a very safe state and waits for commands from Earth. Mars Odyssey appears to be in great shape and should be back in business in a few days. A likely cause of the event was a big blast of high-energy particles from the Sun that got to Mars right before it happened. So there doesn't appear to be anything to worry about, and both rovers came through the particle event unscathed. But because we relay most of our data through Mars Odyssey, we won't see very much data from the rovers until Odyssey is back online.


Posted previously by nprev on the Solar Activity thread.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Just thinking the unthinkable here. What if NASA were to lose Odyssey. Would MRO be able to take over data relay at this stage of it's mission? Would it impact MRO's mission too much?

I would think it wouldn't take up too much of the spacecraft's resources transmitting a few dozen images per day, that data volume is tiny compared to a single HiRISE image, but the rover to orbiter relay might?