Mission managers are ready to publicly share the first
images and science results from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey,
which is currently in orbit around the red planet. A briefing
is scheduled for 2 p.m. EST Friday, March 1, at the NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

Presenters include:

* Michael Meyer, Odyssey program scientist from NASA
Headquarters

* Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, Odyssey project scientist from
JPL

* Dr. Phillip Christensen, principal investigator for the
camera system, Arizona State University, Tempe

* Dr. William Boynton, principal investigator for the Gamma
Ray Spectrometer Suite, University of Arizona, Tucson

* Dr. Frank Cucinoatta, principal investigator for the
Martian Radiation Environment Experiment, NASA’s Johnson
Space Center (JSC), Houston

* Roger Gibbs, Odyssey deputy project manger from JPL

The briefing will be broadcast on NASA Television, which is
on satellite GE-2, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85
degrees West longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz.
Polarization is vertical and audio is monaural at 6.8 MHz.

JPL manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office
of Space Science in Washington. Principal investigators at
Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona
in Tucson and JSC, operate the science instruments.
Additional science investigators are located at the Russian
Space Research Institute and Los Alamos National
Laboratories, New Mexico.

Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor
for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission
operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and
from JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.

Additional information about the 2001 Mars Odyssey is
available on the Internet at:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/