[citation needed] Nozomi was designed to study the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind and to develop technologies for use in future planetary missions.

Specifically, instruments on the spacecraft were to measure the structure, composition and dynamics of the ionosphere, aeronomy effects of the solar wind, the escape of atmospheric constituents, the intrinsic magnetic field, the penetration of the solar-wind magnetic field, the structure of the magnetosphere, and dust in the upper atmosphere and in orbit around Mars.

The gravitational assist from the flyby coupled with a 7 minute burn of the bipropellant rocket put Nozomi into an escape trajectory towards Mars.

It was scheduled to arrive at Mars on October 11, 1999, at 7:45:14 UT, but a malfunctioning valve during the Earth swingby resulted in a loss of fuel and left the spacecraft with insufficient acceleration to reach its planned trajectory.

The small thrusters were fired on December 9, moving the closest approach distance to 1,000 km so that the probe would not inadvertently impact on Mars and possibly contaminate the planet with Earth bacteria, since the orbiter had not been intended to land and was therefore not properly sterilized.

The more distant parts of the orbit would be for study of the ions and neutral gas escaping from Mars and their interactions with the solar wind.

The 14 instruments carried on Nozomi were an imaging camera, neutral mass spectrometer, dust counter, thermal plasma analyzer, magnetometer, electron and ion spectrum analyzers, ion mass spectrograph, high energy particles experiment, VUV imaging spectrometer, sounder and plasma wave detector, LF wave analyzer, electron temperature probe, and a UV scanner.

[4] (Previously, the National Research Council of Canada provided the High Flux Telescope (HFT) for the Ulysses interplanetary mission.

They were[6][7][8] Nozomi transmitted useful data on measurement of Lyman-alpha light during the course of conducting various scientific observations in interplanetary space.