A decade ago, on September 21, 2014, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, beginning its ongoing exploration of the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere. Today, MAVEN continues to make exciting new discoveries about the Red Planet that increase our understanding of how atmospheric evolution affected Mars’ climate and the previous presence of liquid water on its surface, potentially determining its prior habitability.
Below is a guide to notable research from the MAVEN mission being presented at the Dec. 9-13 American Geological Union 2024 Fall Meeting in Washington D.C.
Presentations are listed in chronological order, and all times are EST.
Media contacts:
Willow Reed, MAVEN Communications Lead, LASP/CU Boulder,
willow.reed@lasp.colorado.edu
Nancy N Jones, Senior Communications Manager, NASA GSFC,
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov
AGU Presentations:
Monday, December 9, 3:00-3:10pm
Observing Planetary Exospheres: Mars and the Earth
John T Clarke et al., Boston University
Interestingly, scientists know more about Mars’ hydrogen exosphere—the outermost layer of a planet’s atmosphere— than about the Earth’s due to the large extent of both exospheres and small number of Earth-mission observations. After continuous observations of Mars’ upper atmosphere with the MAVEN mission, and anticipating observations of the Earth’s exosphere with the Carruthers mission in 2025, this brief overview will present the existing state of observations and understanding of the exospheres of Mars and the Earth.
Tuesday, December 10, 11:00-11:10am
Novel Limb Observations of Martian Mesospheric Clouds with MAVEN/IUVS
Matteo Crismani et al., California State University San Bernardino
NASA’s MAVEN orbiter brings a new perspective to polar orbiting and occultation cloud observations by collecting data at a variety of local times, seasons, and geographic locations. For a decade, MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument has taken full disk, mid-ultraviolet images at high spatial resolution, which permits limb observations of dayside Martian mesospheric clouds. Here we show the first results of this initial characterization of the mesospheric cloud season for multiple Martian years.
This work has recently been integrated into NASA’s Citizen Science program through Cloudspotting on Mars: Shapes.
Wednesday, December 11, 9:20-9:30am
Evolution of Stream Interaction Regions between 1 and 1.5 AU: Observations from STEREO A and MAVEN
Sarah Henderson et al., Montana State University
Stream interaction regions (SIRs) are solar wind structures resulting from the direct interaction between stable, fast solar wind streams and slow solar wind streams. These structures have been thoroughly and actively observed at 1 AU for decades, but not at 1.5 AU due to limited spacecraft observations. The MAVEN spacecraft provides us with an opportunity to fill this observational gap and allows us to characterize and better understand SIRs at these two locations.
Thursday, December 12, 9:01-9:11am
The Iterative Downward Continuation Method for Martian Crustal Magnetic Fields using MGS and MAVEN data
Rachel Maxwell et al., University of Maryland Baltimore County
The Martian crustal magnetic field has been observed extensively at altitude by both MAVEN and Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). Downward continuation methods are often used in geophysics to infer the magnetic field at lower altitudes, but this process is susceptible to magnification of noise. Here we present an iterative method of downward continuation which has been used in studies on Earth but seldom in planetary science, applied to both MGS and MAVEN data with success. The goal of the project is to create a map of the crustal magnetic field with much greater spatial resolution, which will aid in characterizing the magnetic source and improve modeling of the radiation environment at the surface of Mars.
Thursday, December 12, 1:40-5:30pm
MAVEN SEP: Turning a Solar Energetic Particle Detector into a Flare Monitor at Mars
Ali Rahmati et al., University of California Berkeley
The Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) instrument onboard the MAVEN spacecraft at Mars is designed to measure the flux and characterize the energy spectrum of solar energetic particle events. As part of this study, we compare the SEP detection of solar flares to those of MAVEN’s Extreme Ultraviolet Monitor (EUVM) measurements when both instruments saw flare X-rays. This would provide a means to calibrate the low energy end of SEP’s response to solar flares, extend the energy range detection of solar flares at Mars and greatly enhance our solar flare observational capability throughout the heliosphere.
