PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 13 (UPI) -- NASA says it has initiated an orbital move of its longest-serving Mars spacecraft to prepare it for new scientific observations of the Red Planet.

The desired change, initiated by a maneuver Tuesday, will occur gradually until the intended new orbit geometry for the Mars Odyssey spacecraft is reached in November 2015 and another maneuver halts the drift, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Thursday.

The move will enable observation of changing ground temperatures after sunrise and after sunset in thousands of places on Mars, NASA scientists said, providing the first systematic observations of how morning fogs, clouds and surface frost develop in different seasons on the Red Planet.

Odyssey, launched in 2011, is the longest-working spacecraft ever sent to Mars.

No NASA Mars orbiter has been in a position to observe morning daylight on Mars since the twin Viking orbiters of the 1970s.

"We're teaching an old spacecraft new tricks," JPL Odyssey Project Scientist Jeffrey Plaut said. "Odyssey will be in position to see Mars in a different light than ever before."

At the end of the orbit-adjustment maneuver, Odyssey will have about enough propellant left for nine to 10 years of operation at estimated annual consumption rates, NASA said.

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NASA moving orbit of spacecraft circling Mars to do new science

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is one of the most accomplished agencies in the U.S. federal government and one of the most respected government entities in the world. To accomplish its mission, NASA works collaboratively with many nations on a broad range of scientific and engineering projects. Foreign national participation in NASA programs and projects is an inherent and essential element in NASA operations. No better illustration of this partnership is the fact that during 2013, NASA's international operations were being supported by over 600 cooperative agreements with 120 nations.

Having a well-run Foreign National Access Management program is in the best interests of NASA, both in terms of protecting vital U.S. security and proprietary information, as well as capitalizing on the talents of foreign nationals. This Academy review examined the Agency's entire FNAM process from the initial request from a requestor or sponsor through foreign national vetting, credentialing, information technology security, counterintelligence, hosting and escort procedures, and export controls.

There is a fundamental tension between NASA's charter to work cooperatively and share information with other nations while simultaneously safeguarding its sensitive and proprietary information and assets from those same nations. How well NASA is able to balance these sometimes conflicting demands and what it might do to improve its processes for working with foreign nationals are the principal questions addressed in the Academy's review.

Over the last year, security incidents involving foreign nationals at NASA research Centers have drawn the attention of the NASA Administrator and other agency leaders, Congress, and the media. Recognizing the growing threat of cyber-attacks and espionage aimed at government agencies by hostile nation-states and foreign adversaries, NASA asked the National Academy of Public Administration (the Academy) to conduct this review of its foreign national management processes.

NASA staff members are dedicated, knowledgeable, committed to the mission, and genuinely happy to be working for NASA -- they routinely rank the Agency as the best place to work in the federal government. NASA interviewees for this study were candid, cooperative, and eager to both offer suggestions and be involved in problem solving. Most NASA employees understood the challenge to share with, as well as to protect information from foreign nationals.

Having such a high-quality, dedicated workforce is a tremendous advantage for NASA in pursuing any improvement initiatives.

The Academy Panel found that as with many federal agency programs, budget and personnel cuts have made the management of NASA's security programs difficult. The Panel is sensitive to the budget situation NASA faces and has tried to keep most of its recommendations within achievable budget limits although some may prove to be resource-intensive. The Panel also thinks that strong leadership, which it believes NASA has, can accomplish much of what is recommended within existing resource limitations. In addition to the mission and security improvements that can be achieved, there are also long-term potential savings the Agency can realize by managing its foreign national efforts in a more efficient and effective manner.

Despite the resource constraints, NASA leaders have already taken a number of positive steps to correct some of the weaknesses in the Foreign National Access Management (FNAM) process, including a moratorium on foreign national access which required each NASA field Center to evaluate its respective compliance with FNAM procedural requirements, a process completed earlier this year. Requesting this Academy review also demonstrates NASA's commitment to making improvements to improving FNAM. To build on NASA's goals, the Panel believes there are a number of important steps the Agency can take to improve FNAM and has proposed twenty-seven recommendations, the most significant of which are combined under the following six topics:

1.Managing Foreign National Access Management as a Program - Currently, FNAM is not managed as a program. There is no systematic approach to FNAM at NASA; rather, there are individual Headquarters program requirements coupled with individual NASA Center approaches. Given inadequate means for determining the overall effect of these processes, the result is a broad range of outcomes, many of which are insufficient. The following steps towards a coordinated FNAM program would begin to coordinate efforts and secure better results:

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NASA: An lndependent Review of Foreign National Access Management

NASA

In June of last year, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden spoke to the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) and shared with the international community what NASA is doing to detect and track asteroids. He also engaged the United Nations support for NASAs mission to find, capture and redirect an asteroid to lunar orbit, and then send humans to explore it by 2025.

Following Boldens presentation, Mazlan Othman, director of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs, offered support for NASAs asteroid initiative and noted that near-Earth objects (NEO) have long been a concern for COPUOS.

This week at the COPUOS Scientific and Technical Subcommittee (STSC) in Vienna, Austria, two NASA experts provided an update about additional efforts NASA is taking to support the global effort to find, characterize, and monitor near-Earth asteroids.

Jason Kessler, program executive for the Asteroid Grand Challenge, gave a presentation on the grand challenge to the subcommittee. Kessler spoke about the critical need for international cooperation in order to meet the grand challenge, which is to find all asteroid threats to human population and know what to do about them.

At their 2013 meeting, COPUOS endorsed expanded efforts for an International Asteroid Warning Network. IAWN is a global network of telescopes and tracking stations from different parts of the world searching all parts of the sky to provide a more comprehensive picture of how many asteroids exist and where they are. The IAWN provides a way for additional nations to join the effort.

>> View animated GIF showing Asteroid 2014 AA, discovered by the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey on Jan. 1, 2014, as it moved across the sky. Credit: CSS/LPL/UA

Lindley Johnson, the program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observations (NEOO) program, spoke to the subcommittee about the progress accomplished in the last year on the IAWN and the hazardous NEO Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), which COPUOS also endorsed in 2013. The SMPAG is a new forum for space capable nations to discuss ways to deflect an asteroid that might impact the Earth. NASA supported the first IAWN Steering Committee meeting in January, as well as the first SMPAG meeting held in early February. The IAWN and the SMPAG are independent of the United Nations, but keep the STSC updated on their activities.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground and space-based telescopes. The NEOO program, commonly called Spaceguard, discovers these objects, characterizes a subset that are of interest and plots their orbits into the future to determine whether any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

As of Feb. 1, 10,685 NEOs have been discovered, including about 97 percent of asteroids larger than .6 miles (one kilometer). But there is a greater need to pinpoint smaller asteroids such as the one that impacted near Chelyabinsk, Russia.

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NASA Experts Continue To Engage United Nations On Asteroid Initiative

An artist's illustration of asteroids, or near-Earth objects, that highlight the need for a complete Space Situational Awareness system. ESA/P.Carril

The results of aworkshopto find the best ways to find, track and deflect asteroids headed for Earth were released by NASA on Feb. 7.

NASA's Asteroid Initiative, started in 2013, includes a mission tocapture a small near-Earth asteroidand drag it into a stable orbit around the moon, and a challenge to devise the best ideas for detecting and defending against potentially dangerous asteroids.

The agency put out a request for information to refine the objectives of the Asteroid Initiative, to generate other mission concepts and increase participation in the mission and planetary defense. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission in Pictures]

NASA received an enthusiastic response, including from the general public. The agency evaluated the ideas it received and chose 96 of them toexplorefurther at a two-part workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 30 and Nov. 20 to 22, 2013.

"We are already acting on the ideas submitted through the [request] process," NASA said in a statement.

For example, the agency reactivated the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, now known asNEOWISE, in Sept. 2013, to look for near-Earth asteroids that could be targets for the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

The workshop report also recommended holding more forums to get citizens involved in the Asteroid Initiative and create incentives to reach milestones in the asteroid mission and grand challenge.

The Asteroid Redirect Mission aims to capture a 23- to 33-foot (7 to 10 meters)asteroid, or a 1- to 33-foot. (1 to 10 m) boulder on a space rock, then haul it into lunar orbit using an unmanned spacecraft. Astronauts could then visit the asteroid using NASA's Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System rocket, bring samples of the rock down to Earth.

The Grand Challenge seeks to identify all asteroids that could pose a threat to humanity and boost NASA's current planetary defense efforts.

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NASA report: How to defend Earth from asteroids