Features, News, & Events
NASA Mars Mission Begins a New Chapter of Science With a New Leader
Dr. Shannon Curry, planetary scientist and the Deputy Assistant Director of Planetary Science at the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at the University of California, Berkeley, has assumed leadership of NASA’s MAVEN mission.
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MAVEN Uses Red Planet’s Atmosphere to Change Orbit
MAVEN has achieved a tighter orbit around Mars to act as a telecommunications relay. The two-month campaign began February 11 and ended April 5. MAVEN’s navigation team slowed the spacecraft down gradually by aerobraking, a process taking advantage of the Martian upper atmosphere to place a small amount of drag on the spacecraft.
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MAVEN shrinking its orbit to prepare for Mars 2020 rover
The 4-year-old atmosphere-sniffing MAVEN mission is embarking on a new campaign today to tighten its orbit around Mars. The operation will reduce the highest point of the MAVEN spacecraft’s elliptical orbit from 3,850 to 2,800 miles (6,200 to 4,500 kilometers) above the surface and prepare it to take on additional responsibility as a data-relay satellite for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which launches next year.
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MAVEN Selfie Marks Four Years in Orbit at Mars
Today, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft celebrates four years in orbit studying the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet and how it interacts with the Sun and the solar wind. To mark the occasion, the team has released a selfie image of the spacecraft at Mars.
MAVEN has obtained a selfie image, looking at ultraviolet wavelengths of sunlight reflected off of components of the spacecraft. The image was obtained with the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument that normally looks at ultraviolet emissions from the Martian upper atmosphere. The IUVS instrument is mounted on a platform at the end of a 1.2-m boom (its own “selfie stick”), and by rotating around the boom can look back at the spacecraft. The selfie was made from 21 different images, obtained with the IUVS in different orientations, that have been stitched together.
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Mars Terraforming Not Possible Using Present-Day Technology
Science fiction writers have long featured terraforming, the process of creating an Earth-like or habitable environment on another planet, in their stories. Scientists themselves have proposed terraforming to enable the long-term colonization of Mars. A solution common to both groups is to release carbon dioxide gas trapped in the Martian surface to thicken the atmosphere and act as a blanket to warm the planet.
However, Mars does not retain enough carbon dioxide that could practically be put back into the atmosphere to warm Mars, according to a new NASA-sponsored study. Transforming the inhospitable Martian environment into a place astronauts could explore without life support is not possible without technology well beyond today’s capabilities.
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