Employees Gather to Learn About MAVEN
By John Putman, originally printed in Goddard View, Vol. 4 Issue 20
December 2, 2008
The Building 3 Auditorium was filled to capacity on November 14 as Goddard employees gathered to learn about the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. MAVEN is Goddard’s first managed Mars mission.
Kris Brown, Special Assistant to the Director, kicked off the MAVEN overview by announcing the naming of a road near Building 32 as Landsat Road. The naming recognizes 34 years of Landsat collecting spectral information from Earth’s surface, and creating a historical archive unmatched in quality, detail, coverage, and length.
Brown went on to introduce Dave Mitchell of Goddard. Mitchell is the MAVEN Project Manager. During the introduction, Brown called MAVEN coming to Goddard, “an extraordinary win for Goddard.”
Mitchell introduced the Principal Investigator for MAVEN, Dr. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. In his introduction, he said, “If you look up ‘Mars scientist,’ you’d find a picture of Bruce Jakosky.”
Jakosky began his presentation by talking about Goddard. In regards to the decision to have Goddard manage the MAVEN program, he said, “Goddard had the right attitude and it was the right move.” He said also that water, and perhaps life, was on Mars at some point in the past. There is also evidence that the Martian atmosphere has been lost to space.
Using the Goddard-built instruments onboard—a mass spectrometer and a magnetometer—MAVEN will obtain detailed measurements of Mars’ upper atmosphere, ionosphere, planetary corona, and solar wind. These measurements will help us understand the histories of Mars’ climate, liquid water, and planetary habitability.
Goddard Space Flight Center will provide project management, mission systems engineering, safety and mission assurance, and project science for MAVEN.
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