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.
“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 needs to be broken off.”
“Early November is the official
This image shows an artist concept of the trajectory of NASA’s MAVEN mission as it approached the Red Planet.
MAVEN entered orbit around Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, completing an interplanetary journey of 10 months and
442 million miles (711 million kilometers). Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Univ. of Colorado
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.
This is the first observation received from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft and was taken by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph
(IUVS) instrument just 8 hours after achieving orbit on Sept. 21, 2014. Credit: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado/NASA
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