NASA’s Oldest Martian Spacecraft Have Been Running for Decades. Here’s How

NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been operating for so long, it can rent a car without any fees. The spacecraft arrived at the Red Planet on October 24, 2001. It, along with its 20-year-old sibling, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), have operated longer than anyone watching their launches could have dreamed possible.

Having such a long record of observations from above the Martian surface has rewritten the story of water on the planet, past and present alike. Keeping the wizened orbiters going for so long has been possible only thanks to great engineering and constant problem solving—and a little luck. But scientists wonder whether, despite their storied legacies, Odyssey and MRO will be the last of their kind, at least for the Red Planet.

“Both Odyssey and MRO are some of the most productive spacecraft that have ever existed,” says Briony Horgan, a planetary scientist at Purdue University...

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