During the day, the sun heats up the surface of Mars. The different minerals on the surface radiate this heat back in different ways, and the thermal imager can measure this heat to figure out what minerals are present. Using the information about minerals from the thermal imager and the information on elements from the spectrometer, the photos from the camera will help locate places with interesting minerals, places where a spacecraft could land in the future. One of those spacecraft could bring back a sample, said UA scientist William Boynton. With sample return, you can find out a thousand times more about Mars than you can with remote sensing instruments.
Radiation is energy that comes from atoms changing.
It occurs naturally on the Earth and through cosmic rays in space. Radiation can come in many forms from the light and heat of the sun to the gamma rays and neutrons that the Odyssey's spectrometer will measure. High levels of radiation can be dangerous to plants and animals because they can damage living tissue. UA planetary scientist Peter Smith thinks it will happen in 30 to 50 years. The planet Mars as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope on March 10, 1997.