The 2001 Mars Odyssey probe (formerly the Mars Surveyor 2001 Orbiter) was the first spacecraft in the revamped NASA Mars Exploration Program. Built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics (Denver) and JPL, the satellite was similar to Mars Climate Orbiter. It carried a 6-meter boom with a gamma ray spectrometer for remote sensing of Martian surface mineralogy, as well as an infrared imager and a radiation environment monitor. Mars Odyssey (the "2001" seems to be dropped in informal use) was to be inserted into Mars orbit in October 2001. The probe had a dry mass of 376 kg and carried 349 kg of propellant. 2001 Mars Odyssey entered a 195 x 215 km x 52 deg parking orbit 10 minutes after launch. After a 12 minute coast the Delta second stage fired again and separated from the third stage, which placed the probe on an Earth escape trajectory. The second stage's final orbit was 177 x 1805 km x 40.0 deg, the lowered inclination probably the result of the depletion burn.

Ekran-M No. 18 was a UHF television broadcasting satellite which was to be stationed at 99 deg E to provided television service to the Russian Far East. The satellite had a launch mass of around 2100 kg and was to replace Ekran-M No. 20 which was launched in 1992 and was operating far beyond its design life.

The improved 3-stage Proton launch vehicle, with a new digital flight control system and enhanced first stage engines, delivered its payload section to a suborbital trajectory at 0456 GMT. The Briz-M upper stage then fired to enter a 200 km parking orbit. It appears that only two more burns were used to reach geostationary orbit: one at around 0540 GMT to enter a 200 x 35800 km GTO, after which the Briz-M toroidal drop tank was jettisoned, and one at around 1100 GMT, to circularize the orbit at geostationary altitude. Briz-M reportedly separated from its payload at 1131 GMT.