SPACE: Mission Status
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
All photos courtesy of "NASA/JPL/Caltech."
DEEP SPACE 1:
March and April were busy months for the Deep Space 1 mission team testing the thrust with its ion propulsion system. The spacecraft's speed was increased by nearly 300 meters per second (about 650 miles per hour). If the spacecraft had expended the same amount of standard rocket propellant instead of using ion propulsion, the speed would have changed by only 50 miles per hour. Deep Space 1 is now more than 68 million miles from Earth. Radio signals traveling at the speed of light take more than 12 minutes to make the round trip.
CASSINI MISSION:
The Cassini Spacecraft, on its way to Saturn, is in good health and on June 24, flew by the planet Venus for the second time. It will be only about 373 miles from Venus and will gain a boost of speed from that planet's gravity. In August, Cassini will fly by the Earth five times higher than the Space Shuttle's orbit. The Earth flyby will bend the flight path toward Jupiter, where it will use Jupiter's gravity to swing the spacecraft on to Saturn, its destination. The cosmic dust analyzer on board has been measuring the dust in the inner solar system.

MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR:
The Global Surveyor has been firing its small thrusters in order to fine-tune its orbit around Mars. Its mapping orbit is designed so the spacecraft does not fly over the same Martian landscape week after week. The spacecraft must fire its thrusters every few months to keep it from staying in the same orbit. This is very important because the science team is taking stereo picture images of the planet Mars surface.
The end of May scientist got a view of the first topographical map of Mars with the relative heights of various geologic features on the red planet, including regions that shaped the flow of water early in Mars' history and what may be the largest impact basin in the Solar System.
The map was produced by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on board. It fires short pulses of infrared light at he surface and measures the time for the return. The time lets scientists know the height of the terrain below.
The Mars Global Surveyor has 5 instruments onboard to give scientist a picture of the seasonal changes of a full Martian year, equal to 2 Earth years.