Menu

MAVEN Status Update: Dec. 5, 2013

By /

LASP mechanical engineers pose with the MAVEN Remote Sensing Package and its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) shortly before the package was delivered to Lockheed Martin for integration onto the spacecraft. (Courtesy LASP/Aref Nammari)
LASP mechanical engineers pose with the MAVEN Remote Sensing Package and its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) shortly before the package was delivered to Lockheed Martin for integration onto the spacecraft. (Courtesy LASP/Aref Nammari)
Mission operators have successfully completed initial on-orbit power on and checkout of the MAVEN Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) and Remote Sensing Package.

All instrument sub-systems have been tested and are performing as expected. As part of this check out, the IUVS has taken two sets of images at various high voltage settings to get a baseline of on-orbit performance at the current instrument temperatures. IUVS took initial measurements of interplanetary hydrogen.

Plans are in place to turn on the IUVS again next week to look at what is left of Comet C/2012 S1 – ISON and then again a few more times during cruise before we get to Mars in September, 2014.

The MAVEN IUVS will measure global characteristics of the Martian upper atmosphere and ionosphere via remote sensing.

[addthis]

Facebook-f Twitter Youtube
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
© Regents of the University of Colorado