Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: MAVEN enters Mars' orbit

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: September 22, 2014 9:59:32 AM CDT
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Subject: FW: MAVEN enters Mars' orbit

NASA's Newest Mars Mission Spacecraft Enters Orbit around Red Planet
This image shows an artist concept of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
› Full image and caption

September 21, 2014
NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars' orbit at 7:24 p.m. PDT (10:24 p.m. EDT) Sunday, Sept. 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere as never done before. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars.
"As the first orbiter dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere, MAVEN will greatly improve our understanding of the history of the Martian atmosphere, how the climate has changed over time, and how that has influenced the evolution of the surface and the potential habitability of the planet," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "It also will better inform a future mission to send humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s."
After a 10-month journey, confirmation of successful orbit insertion was received from MAVEN data observed at the Lockheed Martin operations center in Littleton, Colorado, as well as from tracking data monitored at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation facility in Pasadena, California. The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna station in Canberra, Australia.
"NASA has a long history of scientific discovery at Mars and the safe arrival of MAVEN opens another chapter," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "Maven will complement NASA's other Martian robotic explorers-and those of our partners around the globe-to answer some fundamental questions about Mars and life beyond Earth."
Following orbit insertion, MAVEN will begin a six-week commissioning phase that includes maneuvering into its final science orbit and testing the instruments and
science-mapping commands. MAVEN then will begin its one Earth-year primary mission, taking measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars' upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.
"It's taken 11 years from the original concept for MAVEN to now having a spacecraft in orbit at Mars," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU/LASP). "I'm delighted to be here safely and successfully, and looking forward to starting our science mission."
The primary mission includes five "deep-dip" campaigns, in which MAVEN's periapsis, or lowest orbit altitude, will be lowered from 93 miles (150 kilometers) to about 77 miles (125 kilometers). These measurements will provide information down to where the upper and lower atmospheres meet, giving scientists a full profile of the upper tier.
"This was a very big day for MAVEN," said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "We're very excited to join the constellation of spacecraft in orbit at Mars and on the surface of the Red Planet. The commissioning phase will keep the operations team busy for the next six weeks, and then we'll begin, at last, the science phase of the mission. Congratulations to the team for a job well done today."
MAVEN launched Nov. 18, 2013, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying three instrument packages. The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California at Berkeley with support from CU/LASP and Goddard, contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet. The Remote Sensing Package, built by CU/LASP, will identify characteristics present throughout the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, provided by Goddard, will measure the composition and isotopes of atomic particles.
The spacecraft's principal investigator is based at CU/LASP. The university provided two science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the project and also provided two science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley provided four science instruments for MAVEN. JPL provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, and Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Program for NASA.
To learn more about the MAVEN mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/maven
and
http://mars.nasa.gov/maven/
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Nancy Neal-Jones / Elizabeth Zubritsky
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
301-286-0039 / 301-614-5438
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.zubritsky@nasa.gov
2014-318

NASA Spacecraft Arrives at Mars to Probe Mysteries of Red Planet's Air
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer | September 21, 2014 10:30pm ET

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars on Sept. 21, 2014.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center View full size image
Mars has welcomed a new robotic visitor from Earth.
After a 10-month journey through deep space, NASA's MAVEN probe arrived in Mars orbit late Sunday (Sept. 21), on a mission to help scientists figure out why the Red Planet changed from a relatively warm and wet place in the ancient past to the cold, arid world it is today.
MAVEN, whose name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, fired its engines in a crucial 30-minute braking burn Sunday night, slowing down enough to be captured by the planet's gravity around 10:24 p.m. EDT (0224 GMT Monday, Sept. 22). [See images from the MAVEN mission]
"Congratulations! MAVEN is now in Mars orbit," MAVEN navigation team member Dave Folta, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, announced to a round of cheers from mission control.
MAVEN joins three other operational probes in Mars orbit — NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and the European Space Agency's Mars Express. NASA also has two rovers actively exploring the planet's surface: the golf-cart-size Opportunity and its younger, bigger cousin, Curiosity.
And Mars orbit should get even more crowded just a few days from now. India's first-ever Red Planet effort, the $74 million Mars Orbiter Mission, is due to arrive Tuesday night (Sept. 23).
Studying Mars' atmosphere
Maven will orbit Mars, looking for clues about what happened to the planet's once-thick atmosphere.
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist
View full size image

The $671 million MAVEN mission blasted off as planned on Nov. 18, 2013, though not without a bit of prelaunch drama.
Liftoff preparations were frozen when the government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1, 2013, sending ripples of anxiety through the MAVEN team and the global planetary science community. But NASA granted MAVEN an emergency exception a few days later, getting things back on track. (The shutdown ended on Oct. 17, 2013.)
MAVEN is the first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying the upper atmosphere of Mars, NASA officials said. The mission will use MAVEN's three suites of scientific instruments to measure and characterize gas escape from the Martian atmosphere, which was once relatively thick but is now just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth at sea level.
MAVEN's observations should help scientists get a better handle on what happened to the water that flowed and sloshed across Mars billions of years ago — whether it escaped into space or sank into the planet's crust, said mission principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]
"What we're going to be doing is studying the top of the atmosphere as a way of understanding the extent to which stripping of gas out of the atmosphere to space may have been the driving mechanism behind climate change," Jakosky said at a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 17). "We should be able to get enough measurements to tell us what happened to the water, what happened to the carbon dioxide."
The mission should shed light on the history of Mars' ability to support life, he added.
"We're trying to understand the context in which life might have existed," Jakosky said. "Any life on Mars interacts with its planetary environment; we need to know what that environment is, and how it's evolved over time."
MAVEN's prime science mission is slated to last one year, but the probe has enough fuel to keep making observations for a while if its mission gets extended, team members said.
MAVEN will also serve as a vital communications link between ground controllers and NASA's Mars rovers. In fact, that's the main reason NASA deemed the mission worthy of an emergency exception during the government shutdown. Opportunity and Curiosity are currently supported by Mars Odyssey and MRO, which launched in 2001 and 2005, respectively, and NASA has no Red Planet relay orbiters on the books beyond MAVEN.
"MAVEN is critically important for us for many reasons, not the least of which is it will serve as backup communications for the rovers on the surface," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Space.com.
MAVEN is one of several missions that should help NASA prepare for an eventual manned mission to Mars, which the agency hopes to mount by the mid-2030s, Bolden added. That mission list includes the active rovers and orbiters now studying Mars, MAVEN and the agency's Mars Insight mission, set to launch in 2016, and the Mars Rover 2020 mission.
Getting to work
MAVEN's science mission will not start right away. The probe's handlers will spend the next six weeks checking out MAVEN's instruments and maneuvering the probe from its long, looping initial orbit down to a 4.5-hour final orbit, which will bring MAVEN as close as 93 miles (150 kilometers) to Mars and take it as far away as 3,850 miles (6,200 km) from the Red Planet.
But MAVEN will make some observations during this checkout period: The probe will look on as Comet Siding Spring buzzes Mars on Oct. 19, coming within just 82,000 miles (132,000 km) of the planet. (For reference, Earth's moon orbits at an average distance of 238,900 miles, or 384,400 km).
"I'm told that the odds of having an approach that close to Mars are about one in a million years," Jakosky said. "So it's really luck that we get the opportunity here."
MAVEN will study the comet and Mars' upper atmosphere for five days around the flyby, he added.
"We should learn a lot about the upper atmosphere from this natural experiment, watching the perturbation from the impact of [cometary] gas and dust," Jakosky said. "And we're hoping to learn about the comet as well."
Any material potentially shed by Siding Spring poses minimal risk to MAVEN and other probes circling the Red Planet, NASA officials have said. There are no worries at all for Opportunity and Curiosity, who enjoy the protection of Mars' atmosphere.

Copyright © 2014 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved.

MAVEN Arrives at Mars! Parks Safely in Orbit
by Bob King on September 21, 2014
Tension and concentration in the control room at Lockheed Martin shortly before MAVEN successfully entered Mars orbit tonight September 21, 2014. Credit: NASA-TV
138 million miles and 10 months journey from planet Earth, MAVEN moved into its new home around the planet Mars this evening. Flight controllers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado anxiously monitored the spacecraft's progress as onboard computers successfully eased the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft into Mars orbit around 10:25 p.m. Eastern time.
Shortly before orbital insertion, six small thrusters were fired to steady the spacecraft so it would enter orbit in the correct orientation. This was followed by a 33-minute burn to slow it down enough for Mars' gravity to capture the craft into an elliptical orbit with a period of 35 hours. Because it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light 12 minutes to cross the gap between Mars and Earth, the entire orbital sequence was executed by onboard computers. There's no chance to change course or make corrections, so the software has to work flawlessly. It did. The burn, as they said was "nominal", science-speak for coming off without a hitch.
Simulation of MAVEN in orbit around Mars. The craft's unique aerodynamically curved solar panels allow it to dive more deeply into the Martian atmosphere. Credit: NASA
Over the next six weeks, controllers will test MAVEN's instruments and shape its orbit into a long ellipse with a period of 4.5 hours and a low point of just 93 miles (150 km), close enough to get a taste of the planet's upper atmosphere. MAVEN's one-Earth-year long primary mission will study the composition and structure of Mars' atmosphere and how it's affected by the sun and solar wind. At least 2,000 Astronomers want to know to determine how the planet evolved from a more temperate climate to the current dry, frigid desert.
Evidence for ancient water flows on Mars – a delta in Eberswalde Crater. Credit: NASA
Vast quantities of water once flowed over the dusty red rocks of Mars as evidenced by ancient riverbeds, outflow channels carved by powerful floods and rocks rounded by the action of water. For liquid water to flow on its surface without vaporizing straight into space, the planet must have had a much denser atmosphere at one time.
Three to four billion years ago, Mars may have been much more like Earth with a thicker atmosphere and water flowing across its surface (left). Over time, it evolved into a dry, cold planet with an atmosphere too thin to support liquid water. Credit: NASA
Mars' atmospheric pressure is now less than 1% that of Earth's. As for the water, what's left today appears locked up as ice in the polar caps and subsurface ice. So where did it go all the air go? Not into making rocks apparently. On Earth, much of the carbon dioxide from volcanic outgassing in the planet's youth dissolved in water and combined with rocks to form carbon-bearing rocks called carbonates. So far, carbonates appear to be rare on Mars. Little has been seen from orbit and in situ with the rovers.
Illustration of electrons and protons in the solar wind slamming into and ionizing atoms in Mars upper atmosphere. Once ionized, the atoms may be carried away by the wind. Credit: NASA
During the year-long mission, MAVEN will dip in and out of the atmosphere some 2,000 times or more to measure what and how much Mars is losing to space. Without the protection of a global magnetic field like the Earth's, it's thought that the solar wind eats away at the Martian atmosphere by ionizing (knocking off electrons) its atoms and molecules. Once ionized, the atoms swirl up the magnetic field embedded in the wind and are carried away from the planet.
MAVEN's suite of instruments will provide the measurements essential to understanding the evolution of the Martian atmosphere. Courtesy LASP/MAVEN
Scientists will coordinate with the Curiosity rover, which can determine the atmospheric makeup at ground level. Although MAVEN won't be taking pictures, its three packages of instruments will be working daily to fill gaps in the story of how Mars became the Red Planet and we the Blue.
For more on the ongoing progress of MAVEN later tonight and tomorrow, stop by NASA TV online.

NASA's Maven explorer arrives at Mars after year
By MARCIA DUNN

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late Sunday after a 442 million-mile journey that began nearly a year ago.
The robotic explorer fired its brakes and successfully slipped into orbit around the red planet, officials confirmed.
"This is such an incredible night," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief for science missions.
Now the real work begins for the $671 million mission, the first dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere.
Flight controllers in Colorado will spend the next six weeks adjusting Maven's altitude and checking its science instruments. Then Maven will start probing the upper atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft will conduct its observations from orbit; it's not meant to land.
Scientists believe the Martian atmosphere holds clues as to how Earth's neighbor went from being warm and wet billions of years ago to cold and dry. That early wet world may have harbored microbial life, a tantalizing question yet to be answered.
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FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 27, 2013 file photo, technicians work on NASA's next Mars-bound s …
NASA launched Maven last November from Cape Canaveral, the 10th U.S. mission sent to orbit the red planet. Three earlier ones failed, and until the official word came of success late Sunday night, the entire team was on edge.
"I don't have any fingernails any more, but we've made it," said Colleen Hartman, deputy director for science at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's incredible."
The spacecraft was clocking more than 10,000 mph when it hit the brakes for the so-called orbital insertion, a half-hour process. The world had to wait 12 minutes to learn the outcome, once it occurred, because of the lag in spacecraft signals given the 138 million miles between the two planets on Sunday.
"Based on observed navigation data, congratulations, Maven is now in Mars orbit," came the official announcement. Flight controllers applauded the news and shook hands; laughter filled the previously tense-filled room.
Maven joins three spacecraft already circling Mars, two American and one European. And the traffic jam isn't over: India's first interplanetary probe, Mangalyaan, will reach Mars in two days and also aim for orbit.
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FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2013 file photo, NASA's Maven, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolut …
Maven's chief investigator, Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, hopes to learn where all the water on Mars went, along with the carbon dioxide that once comprised an atmosphere thick enough to hold moist clouds.
The gases may have been stripped away by the sun early in Mars' existence, escaping into the upper atmosphere and out into space. Maven's observations should be able to extrapolate back in time, Jakosky said.
Maven — short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission — will spend at least a year collecting data. That's a full Earth year, half a Martian one. Its orbit will dip as low as 78 miles above the Martian surface as its eight instruments make measurements. The craft is as long as a school bus, from solar wingtip to tip, and as hefty as an SUV.
Maven will have a rare brush with a comet next month.
The nucleus of newly discovered Comet Siding Spring will pass 82,000 miles from Mars on Oct. 19. The risk of comet dust damaging Maven is low, officials said, and the spacecraft should be able to observe Siding Spring as a science bonus.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Maven's maker, is operating the mission from its control center at Littleton, Colorado.
This is NASA's 21st shot at Mars and the first since the Curiosity rover landed on the red planet in 2012. Just this month, Curiosity arrived at its prime science target, a mountain named Sharp, ripe for drilling. The Opportunity rover is also still active a decade after landing.
All these robotic scouts are paving the way for the human explorers that NASA hopes to send in the 2030s. The space agency wants to understand as much about the red planet as possible before it sends people there.

Copyright © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft enters Mars orbit
By Kerry Sheridan

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Washington (AFP) - NASA's MAVEN spacecraft began orbiting Mars on Sunday, on a mission to study how the Red Planet's climate changed over time from warm and wet to cold and dry.
"Based on observed navigation data, congratulations. MAVEN is now in orbit," said Dave Folta of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center just before 10:30 pm (0230 GMT).
The unmanned orbiter has traveled more than 10 months and 442 million miles (711 million kilometers) to reach Mars for a first-of-its kind look at the planet's upper atmosphere.
The data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft aims to help scientists understand what happened to the water on Mars and the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere several billion years ago.
How Mars lost its atmosphere is one of science's biggest mysteries. The answers could shed light on the planet's potential to support life -- even if that was just microbial life -- long ago.
MAVEN's findings are also expected to help add to knowledge of how humans could survive on a future visit to the Red Planet, perhaps as early as 2030.
"Mars is a cool place, but there is not much atmosphere," said John Clarke of the MAVEN science team.
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A general view of the Red Planet's surface, captured by Mastcam:Left onboard NASA's Mars rov …
"It is very cold, it is well below zero. The atmosphere is about half a percent of what we are breathing," he added.
"But we know that Mars could change and it was probably different in the past. There is a lot of evidence of flowing water on the surface from Mars's ancient history."
- Mission begins -
Next, MAVEN will enter a six-week phase for tests.
It will then begin a one-year mission of studying the gases in Mars's upper atmosphere and how it interacts with the sun and solar wind.
Much of MAVEN's year-long mission will be spent circling the planet 3,730 miles above the surface.
However, it will execute five deep dips to a distance of just 78 miles above the Martian landscape to get readings of the atmosphere at various levels.
NASA is the world's most successful space agency at sending rovers and probes to Mars, and past missions have included the Viking 1 and 2 in 1975 and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005.
The US space agency's latest robotic vehicle, Curiosity, is exploring Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, looking for interesting rocks and returning data on whether the Martian environment shows evidence of a past ability to support life.
Later this week, an Indian spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission, will be on course to reach Mars.
The unmanned MOM probe is set to enter Mars's orbit in the next few days after 10 months in space, marking India's first mission to the planet to search for evidence of life.
"We are not the only show that is happening on Mars this week," said Gary Napier, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, during a NASA television broadcast of the orbital insertion.
"Everyone at NASA and its partners wishes that team all the best."

Copyright © 2014 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

MAVEN spacecraft brakes into orbit around Mars
09/22/2014 01:19 AM
Editor's note...
Posted at 01:50 PM ET, 09/21/14: NASA's MAVEN probe on track for Mars orbit insertion
Updated at 10:35 PM ET, 09/21/14: MAVEN enters orbit around Mars (6grafld-pickup7thgraf: We should x x x)
Updated at 12:45 AM ET, 09/22/14: Data indicates MAVEN in good shape after Mars orbit insertion (8grafld-pickup5thgraf: During this X X X)
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News

Ten months and 442 million miles outbound from Earth, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft fired its braking rockets Sunday to slip into orbit around the red planet, kicking off a $671 million mission to find out how much of the martian atmosphere leaked away in the distant past in an extreme case of climate change.

"What a night! You get one shot at Mars orbit insertion, and MAVEN nailed it tonight," said NASA project manager David Mitchell. "We've got a really happy crew in the building here, across the country and literally around the world."
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, seen in this artist's impression, successfully braked into orbit around Mars late Sunday, kicking off a long-awaited mission to study the red planet's atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)

Launched from Cape Canaveral atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Nov. 18, 2013, MAVEN's six engines ignited at 9:38 p.m. EDT, slowing the 2.5-ton spacecraft by about 2,750 mph to let the planet's gravity capture it in a roughly 35-hour elliptical orbit as planned.

"Based on observed navigation data, congratulations!" chief navigator David Folta told MAVEN engineers after the rocket firing ended. "MAVEN is now in Mars orbit."

After the burn, MAVEN re-oriented itself to aim its high-gain antenna back toward Earth, re-establishing a faster data link to give flight controllers a more detailed look at the spacecraft's performance. While that work was still in progress when a NASA news conference got underway, a preliminary look at the data showed the spacecraft was healthy and operating normally.

Speaking from spacecraft-builder Lockheed Martin's control center near Denver, Mitchell said the 34-minute MOI rocket firing ran just 11 seconds longer than predicted, "which means MAVEN nailed it. Right on the money." The data from the spacecraft backed that up. The low point of the resulting elliptical orbit was very close to 236 miles, almost exactly what was expected.

"The preliminary look is that all systems seem to be healthy, we don't see anything that shows a problem," said Guy Beutelschies, MAVEN program manager with Lockheed Martin.

Flight controllers will spend the next six weeks checking out MAVEN's instruments, deploying booms and antennas and fine-tuning its orbit, firing the spacecraft's thrusters five more times to lower the high point to around 3,860 miles and the low point to less than 100 miles.

During this so-called transition phase, the spacecraft will be used in concert with other Mars orbiters for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study a comet during a close flyby. Comet C/2013 A1, known as Siding Spring, will pass within about 82,000 miles of Mars on Oct. 19, a remarkably close encounter expected to happen once in a million years.

"We are going to take advantage of this bonus opportunity to do science, and we'll be making observations of the comet itself and the Mars upper atmosphere before and after the comet arrives," Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in a pre-arrival news conference.

"We should learn a lot about the upper atmosphere from this natural experiment, watching the perturbation from the impact of gas and dust, and we're hoping to learn about the comet as well," he said.

But the primary goal of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution -- MAVEN -- spacecraft is to study the martian atmosphere, repeatedly flying through its upper reaches to sample its constituents, map out its structure and measure how solar radiation and electrically charged particles from the sun affect its evolution.

Mars does not have an active magnetic field to shield the planet from the effects of such high energy radiation, which may act to carry away atoms and molecules in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft slipped into orbit around Mars late Sunday, prompting cheers and applause at a Lockheed Martin control center near Denver where company engineers and NASA managers monitored the probe's arrival. (Credit: NASA)

"The evidence shows that the Mars atmosphere today is a cold, dry environment, one where liquid water really can't exist in a stable state," Jakosky said. "But it also tells us the ancient surface had liquid water flowing over it and we see evidence for lakes, for river channels, a lot of evidence for liquid water that required a very different climate than the one we have today.

"What that leads us to ask is, where did the water go? Where did the CO2 (carbon dioxide) go from that early environment? And it can go to two places, it can go down into the crust or it can go up to the top of the atmosphere where it can be lost to space."

MAVEN's instruments were designed to help scientists figure out "the extent to which stripping of gas out of the atmosphere to space may have been the driving mechanism of climate change."

"We study the top of the atmosphere because that's the place where the gas that is escaping resides, and it's a conduit through which the gas has to traverse as it goes from the lower atmosphere to the top where it can be stripped away by the solar wind or by other processes," Jakosky said.

"The question is whether over long periods of time this process, or any of the other processes that are operating, has been responsible for removing a lot of the gas. This is the major question we want to address."

The MAVEN spacecraft measures 37.5 feet across its two solar panels, weighs more than 5,000 pounds and is equipped with eight primary instruments and UHF radio gear designed to relay data back to Earth from rovers on the martian surface.

Six of its instruments will measure particles and fields, mapping out the interaction of the atmosphere with electrically charged particles from the sun and the impact of solar radiation. Two other instruments will carry out remote sensing and chemical analysis of particles in the red planet's atmosphere.

"We want to understand the driving forces, that is, the energy that comes in from the sun, from the solar wind and how the upper atmosphere responds and how the response leads to the escape of gas out the top," Jakosky said. "Even though the processes we're interested in operated billions of years ago, looking today we can understand the processes and how they operated and extrapolate backward in time."

MAVEN will join three other operational satellites currently circling the fourth planet: NASA's Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001; the European Space Agency's Mars Express, launched in 2003, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005.

In addition, India's Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, is expected to brake into orbit Wednesday.

NASA also operates two rovers on the surface, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, launched in 2003, and the nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, launched in 2011. Both rovers use Odyssey and MRO to relay science data back to Earth and to receive commands from flight controllers. MAVEN is equipped with similar relay gear and will serve as a backup for use as needed.

The over-arching goal of NASA's Mars exploration strategy is to characterize the past and present habitability of the planet, to look for signs of the organic compounds that are necessary for life as it is known on Earth and, eventually, to figure out whether life ever evolved on the fourth planet from the sun.

"Life by itself is not easy to identify, it's not easy to understand," said Jakosky. "And we're trying to understand the context in which life might have existed. Any life on Mars interacts with its planetary environment, we need to know what that environment is and how it's evolved over time.

"MAVEN is about looking at the history of the atmosphere in order to understand the history of that environment. So it's really telling us the boundary conditions around the potential for life. By understanding the processes by which the atmosphere changed, we're learning about the history of the habitability of Mars. And by looking at Mars relative to Earth and Venus, we're learning about the nature of planets and the history of atmospheres in general."

© 2014 William Harwood/CBS News

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft enters orbit around Mars
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
September 22, 2014
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft braked into orbit around Mars on Sunday after a 10-month interplanetary cruise from Earth, positioning the probe to help scientists learn how water and air were stripped from the red planet's ancient atmosphere, killing off life that may have once existed there.

Artist's concept of the MAVEN spacecraft's orbit insertion burn at Mars. Credit: Lockheed Martin

Reaching its destination after a 10-month voyage spanning 442 million miles since its launch Nov. 18, 2013, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, MAVEN lit six rocket thrusters to slow down the spacecraft by about 2,750 mph, enough for Martian gravity to capture MAVEN in a 35-hour-long orbit.
Confirmation of a successful orbit insertion burn came at 10:25 p.m. EDT (0225 GMT) after a nail-biting 34-minute maneuver that kept engineers staring at data screens inside a control center at MAVEN contractor Lockheed Martin's facility in Denver.
"Based on observed navigation data, congratulations!" said Dave Folta, a MAVEN navigation engineer. "MAVEN is now in Mars orbit."
The announcement erased the tension in the MAVEN control room as the team broke out into applause and exchanged congratulatory handshakes.
"We often talk about how Mars is hard," said John Grunsfeld, head of NASA's science mission directorate. "And once again, this team made it look easy, but it certainly wasn't. It represents many years of very complex work."
The $671 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission carries sensors to sniff the wispy air at the top of the Martian atmosphere, collecting data researchers will use to look back in time and figure out how Mars transformed from a habitable world to a barren planet void of any detectable life.
"The MAVEN mission is about understanding the history of the climate on Mars," said Bruce Jakosky, the mission's chief scientist from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "We're going to be exploring an aspect of the Martian atmosphere and upper atmosphere that really has not been explored in detail by any spacecraft to date."
Before MAVEN could address the questions posed by Jakosky's science team, the school bus-sized spacecraft had one shot Sunday to be captured in orbit around Mars.
The spacecraft was programmed to ignite its rocket thrusters at 9:37 p.m. EDT (0137 GMT).
But ground controllers could not confirm the success of the crucial make-or-break rocket firing for more than 12 minutes, as telemetry from MAVEN beamed across the solar system at the speed of light, covering nearly 140 million miles separating Earth and Mars.
Sunday's rocket burn was supposed to place MAVEN in an orbit with a high point of 27,700 miles and a low point of 236 miles.
David Mitchell, MAVEN's project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said Sunday night's Mars orbit insertion burn was right on the money.
"You get one shot with Mars orbit insertion, and MAVEN nailed it tonight," Mitchell said.
MAVEN's braking burn to enter Mars orbit lasted 34 minutes and 26 seconds, according to Mitchell.
"That was about 11 seconds longer than the nominal, which really means we nailed it," Mitchell said.
"Tracking data indicates we're in a stable capture orbit," he said. "The orbit period is near the target of 35 hours."

MAVEN team members celebrate inside the spacecraft control room at Lockheed Martin's facility in Littleton, Colo. Credit: Lockheed Martin

A series of smaller maneuvers were planned over the next six weeks to transfer MAVEN into a lower, less elliptical orbit around Mars.
By early November, MAVEN should be in its operational orbit ranging between 93 miles and 3,860 miles above Mars.
While MAVEN lowers its altitude, ground controllers will put the spacecraft's suite of science instruments through testing and take advantage of a fortuitous flyby of Mars by comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on Oct. 19.
Working in concert with other missions at Mars, MAVEN will directly observe Siding Spring and gauge the Martian atmosphere's response to dust and gas spewed off by the comet.
Jakosky said the comet encounter is an opportunity for bonus science, but MAVEN will be flying on the opposite side of Mars from the comet during its closest approach, using the planet as a shield from an unpredictable cloud of material that could be in Siding Spring's tail.
"We should learn a lot about the upper atmosphere from the this natural experiment watching the perturbation from the impact of gas and dust, and we're hoping to learn about the comet as well," Jakosky said.
Once the comet passes Mars and MAVEN reaches its science orbit, the mission will turn to its primary purpose of investigating an ancient shift in Martian climate that dried up riverbeds, thinned out the red planet's atmosphere, and may have doomed Martian life -- if it existed.
"The evidence shows that the Mars atmosphere today is a cold, dry environment, one where liquid water really can't exist in a stable state," Jakosky said. "But it also tells us when we look at older surfaces that the ancient surfaces had liquid water flowing over it, and we see evidence for lakes -- for river channels -- a lot of evidence of liquid water that required a very different climate than the one we have today."
Five times during its one-year prime mission, MAVEN will alter its orbit to dip deeper into the wispy layers of gas enshrouding Mars, plowing through the atmosphere just 77 miles above the red planet.
"If you put your hand while you're going through, you would feel a light breeze," said Guy Beutelschies, MAVEN program manager at Lockheed Martin, before the mission's launch. "It's really a modest amount of pressure out there, but it is a tremendous value for the scientists to be able to go down and get that in situ measurement of the atmosphere."
MAVEN's solar panels are canted at an angle on each end, making the spacecraft more aerodynamic when it flies through the outer atmosphere of Mars, according Beutelschies.
The spacecraft is outfitted with instrumentation to keep track of solar activity, measure the make-up of the Martian upper atmosphere, and observe how the atmosphere moves, grows and shrinks during the mission.
NASA has committed to paying for MAVEN to collect scientific data for at least one year - until late 2015 - but the platform has enough fuel to last up to a decade.
One of MAVEN's ancillary objectives is to serve as a communications relay platform for NASA's rovers on the surface of Mars. The space agency relies on orbiters above Mars to function as faster radio links with the rovers than if engineers were forced to communicate with them directly.
MAVEN's relay radio will be tested in November during a communications link-up with the Curiosity rover.
But research is the reason for MAVEN's existence.
Scientists know Mars today is a barren world with its water locked up in underground aquifers or in immense polar ice caps. Thanks to missions like the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, geologists have obtained a window into the Martian environment billions of years ago, when Mars had ample flowing water and all the chemical ingredients required to give rise to life.
Data from previous missions lack insight into how and when Mars changed, and MAVEN's job is to find out what triggered the dramatic climate shift.
"What that leads us to ask is where did the water go? Where did the CO2 (carbon dioxide) go from that early environment," Jakosky said. "It can go to two places. It can go down into the crust, or it can go up to the top of the atmosphere where it can be lost to space. What we're going to be doing is studying the top of the atmosphere as a way of understanding the extent to which stripping of gas out of the atmosphere to space may have been the driving mechanism behind climate change."
MAVEN joins NASA's two other operational Mars orbiters at the red planet -- the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey -- along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft.
With NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers crawling around the Martian surface, the arrival of MAVEN will put the number of operational Mars missions at six.
The number won't stay there for long.
India's first interplanetary spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission, is scheduled fly into orbit around the red planet Wednesday.

© 2014 Spaceflight Now Inc.

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
September 22nd, 2014

MAVEN Arrives in Mars Orbit to Study Red Planet's Habitability and Tenuous Upper Atmosphere
By Ken Kremer
This image shows an artist concept of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. Credit: NASA
NASA's newest Mars mission, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, successfully entered orbit around the Red Planet just hours ago, on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014, at 10:24 p.m. EDT, to conduct the first detailed study of the planet's tenuous upper atmosphere and to unlock mysteries on its habitability.
The MAVEN spacecraft completed the crucial Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) maneuver this evening after firing its six braking thrusters for approximately 34 minutes and 26 seconds.
"You only get one shot at Mars Orbit Insertion and we nailed it," said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., at a post-MOI media briefing at the Lockheed Martin operations center in Littleton, Colo,. where the spacecraft was built. "It was about 11 seconds longer than planned. My thanks to all who worked so hard on this project."
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is depicted in orbit around an artistic rendition of planet Mars, which is shown in transition from its ancient, water-covered past, to the cold, dry, dusty world that it has become today. Credit: NASA
"A post-MOI assessment indicated we are in a stable capture orbit of approximately 35-hour duration."
"Five additional burns will reduce that to the planned 4.5-hour science mapping orbit," Mitchell noted.
MAVEN arrived after a trouble-free and fantastic 10-month interplanetary voyage of 442 million miles from Earth to the Red Planet.
"As the first orbiter dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere, MAVEN will greatly improve our understanding of the history of the Martian atmosphere, how the climate has changed over time, and how that has influenced the evolution of the surface and the potential habitability of the planet," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a statement.
"It also will better inform a future mission to send humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s."
NASA is currently building the Orion crew spacecraft and SLS rocket to send humans on deep space destinations to asteroids and Mars.
MAVEN joins an armada of five spacecraft already exploring Mars in great detail but with different science goals.
"NASA has a long history of scientific discovery at Mars and the safe arrival of MAVEN opens another chapter," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington.
"Maven will complement NASA's other Martian robotic explorers—and those of our partners around the globe—to answer some fundamental questions about Mars and life beyond Earth."
"Stepping back and thinking what this represents it amazing to think about what has been accomplished," Grunsfeld said at the briefing.
Artist's concept of Maven in orbit around the planet Mars. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC
"We are now in orbit at Mars after 11 years of hard work," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU/LASP), gleefully at the briefing.
"My heart is about ready to start again. We had an absolutely flawless performance tonight."
"Over the next six weeks we will do the commissioning work to prepare the spacecraft for its science mission. Four booms need to be deployed and one cap need to be broken off."
"Early November is the official start of the science mission. But we'll have five days of bonus science with the unexpected flyby of Comet Siding Spring in mid-October."
The primary mission includes five "deep-dip" campaigns, in which MAVEN's periapsis, or lowest orbit altitude, will be lowered from 93 miles (150 kilometers) to about 77 miles (125 kilometers). These measurements will provide information down to where the upper and lower atmospheres meet, giving scientists a full profile of the upper tier, according to NASA.
MAVEN will investigate Mars transition from its ancient, water-covered past, to the cold, dry, dusty world it has become today.
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft in pre-launch processing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo Credit: John Studwell
MAVEN is NASA's first orbiter specifically dedicate to investigate the planet's thin upper atmosphere and to begin solving the riddles of Mars' climate mysteries, atmospheric and water loss, and habitability.
"Where did the water go, and where did the carbon dioxide go from the early atmosphere? What were the mechanisms?" notes Jakosky.
The 5,400-pound MAVEN probe carries nine sensors in three instrument suites to study why and exactly when did Mars undergo the radical climatic transformation.
"I'm really looking forward to getting to Mars and starting our science!" Jakosky said.
MAVEN thundered to space on Nov. 18, 2013, following a flawless blastoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 atop a powerful Atlas V rocket, and thus began a 10-month interplanetary voyage from Earth to the Red Planet.
Two days from now, India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) mission arrives at the Red Planet.
"We wish a successful MOI for MOM," said Jakosky.
Scientists from MAVEN, Curiosity, Opportunity, and all the orbiters will work in concert utilizing all the data to elucidate the history of Mars potential for supporting life—past and present.
Stay tuned here for continuing developments regarding Earth's "Missions to Mars."
Ken Kremer

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