NASA Mars MAVEN Mission: 5 Facts
How did Mars lose its atmosphere? NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, now en route to the Red Planet, aims to find out.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt90e5f8de2f445a58/64cb57bb16e642197e2a9c86/Maven-orbit.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
NASA's latest Mars mission, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, is on its way to the Red Planet to explore the evolution of its atmosphere over billions of years. Scientists leading the mission hope to find out how a planet that once had Earth-like characteristics became the dry desert it is today.
The 37-foot spacecraft, developed by Lockheed Martin, is carrying a payload of science instruments that will analyze Mars's upper atmosphere and will measure current rates of atmospheric loss. MAVEN houses three instrument packages:
The Particles and Fields Package was built by the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, with support from the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It consists of six instruments. They include the Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA); Solar Wind Ion Analyzer (SWIA); Suprathermal and Thermal Ion Composition (STATIC), which will measure energetic particles in the Martian atmosphere; Solar Energetic Particle (SEP), which will measure the impact of the solar wind on the upper atmosphere of Mars; Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW), which will determine thermal electron density and temperature; and the Magnetometer (MAG), an instrument for measuring interplanetary solar wind and ionospheric magnetic fields.
The Remote Sensing package, also built by the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, contains the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS), which will measure the global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars.
The last package, consisting of the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS), will measure the composition and isotopes of neutral ions. NGIMS was developed by the Goddard Space Flight Center.
When MAVEN arrives at Mars in September 2014, the spacecraft will execute a maneuver called orbit insertion, where it will fire six thrusters that will allow it to enter the planet's orbit. In the five weeks that follow, MAVEN will establish itself in orbit, where it will begin a one-year primary scientific mission.
"MAVEN joins our orbiters and rovers already at Mars to explore yet another facet of the Red Planet and prepare for human missions there by the 2030s," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement announcing the launch. "This mission is part of an integrated and strategic exploration program that is uncovering the mysteries of the solar system and enabling us to reach farther destinations."
Through government, industry, and university partnerships, it took NASA 10 years to develop the mission concept and hardware. Click through our slideshow to learn more about NASA's MAVEN mission to Mars. (All images courtesy of NASA.)
Elena Malykhina has written for The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Newsday, and AdWeek. She covers the federal government, including NASA's space missions, for InformationWeek.
The MAVEN mission successfully launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 18 at 1:28 p.m. EST. Shortly after liftoff, the 5,400-pound spacecraft deployed its solar arrays and began producing power. Before it can start collecting science data, MAVEN must complete a check-out period. The 10-month journey is expected to bring the spacecraft to its final destination -- Mars' orbit -- on Sept. 22, 2014. At its highest point, MAVEN is expected to be more than 3,728 miles above the surface of Mars to capture ultraviolet images of the entire planet. The combination of measurements and global imaging will offer a better understanding of the upper atmosphere, according to NASA.
In this artist's concept, the MAVEN spacecraft is pictured with Mars in the background. The image was created prior to MAVEN's launch to show how it would observe coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which are caused by the erratic behavior of the solar atmosphere. The sun emitted many coronal mass ejections in the week leading up to Oct. 31, 2013, which merged over time to pass Mars, according to NASA. MAVEN was created to observe such events. Once the spacecraft is in the path of a CME, it will experience a surge of solar particles, which can be hazardous to both equipment and humans in space. MAVEN, however, was designed to withstand this solar radiation storm. Its ultimate goal is to observe how solar particles affect, and possibly exhaust, Mars's atmosphere.
Scientists believe that Mars once contained microbial life, with an atmosphere warm enough to support water. This still image from complex animations produced by NASA's Conceptual Image Lab shows how the surface of Mars might have looked. Evidence suggests that ancient Mars contained a denser atmosphere and liquid water. The video is one of the most complex animations produced by the lab. "We now have this new capability to create ultra-high resolution (4K) animations for a fraction of the cost of new machines, all thanks to this complex MAVEN video project," the project's lead animator, Michael Lentz of Universities Space Research Association, said in a written statement.
Another still from NASA's Conceptual Image Lab animations shows what the atmosphere of Mars looks like today. The planet's lakes dried up and froze over, and it changed from having Earth-like blue skies to a dusty pink atmosphere. So how exactly did Mars lose its atmosphere? That's the primary goal of the MAVEN mission. Using its instruments, MAVEN will work with other missions, such as the Curiosity Mars rover, to uncover these answers about Mars. "Previous remote Mars observations from orbiting spacecraft have observed the geological features," Joseph Grebowsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a written statement. "MAVEN is going to measure the current rates of loss to space and the controlling processes."
On Dec. 4, Goddard Space Flight Center ran three experiments of the same kind across three different space missions, all involving an instrument called mass spectrometer. The instrument is designed to collect atmospheric, rock, or soil samples and identify the molecules they contain. Two of the experiments involved NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, stationed at the moon, and the Curiosity rover located on Mars. The other was MAVEN, which turned on its Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer for the first time to measure calibration gases in the instrument. MAVEN will later use the spectrometer to study Mars' upper atmosphere upon its arrival at the Red Planet.
Recommended reading:
NASA Launches Next Mission To Mars
NASA Curiosity Rover's Year On Mars: 5 Breakthroughs
NASA's LADEE Moon Mission: 5 Goals
NASA Curiosity Rover Back To Work
NASA Curiosity Rover Finds Life-Enabling Basics On Mars
On Dec. 4, Goddard Space Flight Center ran three experiments of the same kind across three different space missions, all involving an instrument called mass spectrometer. The instrument is designed to collect atmospheric, rock, or soil samples and identify the molecules they contain. Two of the experiments involved NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, stationed at the moon, and the Curiosity rover located on Mars. The other was MAVEN, which turned on its Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer for the first time to measure calibration gases in the instrument. MAVEN will later use the spectrometer to study Mars' upper atmosphere upon its arrival at the Red Planet.
Recommended reading:
NASA Launches Next Mission To Mars
NASA Curiosity Rover's Year On Mars: 5 Breakthroughs
NASA's LADEE Moon Mission: 5 Goals
NASA Curiosity Rover Back To Work
NASA Curiosity Rover Finds Life-Enabling Basics On Mars
-
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like