tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8018476581787073112024-03-18T21:45:59.651-06:00Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission (MAVEN)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-81869291073703580052014-09-30T14:44:00.000-06:002014-09-30T14:44:19.590-06:00First Observations of Mars' Extended Upper Atmosphere<div class="p1">
NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has obtained its first observations of the extended upper atmosphere surrounding Mars.</div>
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The Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument obtained these false-color images eight hours after the successful completion of Mars orbit insertion by the spacecraft at 10:24 p.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 21, after a 10-month journey.</div>
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The image shows the planet from an altitude of 36,500 km in three ultraviolet wavelength bands. Blue shows the ultraviolet light from the sun scattered from atomic hydrogen gas in an extended cloud that goes to thousands of kilometers above the planet’s surface. Green shows a different wavelength of ultraviolet light that is primarily sunlight reflected off of atomic oxygen, showing the smaller oxygen cloud. Red shows ultraviolet sunlight reflected from the planet’s surface; the bright spot in the lower right is light reflected either from polar ice or clouds.</div>
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The oxygen gas is held close to the planet by Mars’ gravity, while lighter hydrogen gas is present to higher altitudes and extends past the edges of the image. These gases derive from the breakdown of water and carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere. Over the course of its one-Earth-year primary science mission, MAVEN observations like these will be used to determine the loss rate of hydrogen and oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. These observations will allow us to determine the amount of water that has escaped from the planet over time.</div>
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MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-78252859410763998032014-09-30T14:40:00.002-06:002014-09-30T14:41:58.656-06:00MAVEN spacecraft enters orbit around Mars<div class="p1">
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars’ orbit at 10:24 p.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere as never done before. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars.</div>
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Read the full feature about MAVEN's successful orbit insertion: <a href="http://bit.ly/1poTT2z">http://bit.ly/1poTT2z</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-337628347113666312014-09-10T15:05:00.003-06:002014-09-10T15:05:33.929-06:00MAVEN spacecraft makes final preparations for Mars<div class="p1">
On Sept. 21, 2014, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft will complete roughly 10 months of travel and enter orbit around the Red Planet.</div>
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The orbit-insertion maneuver will be carried out as the spacecraft approaches Mars, wrapping up an interplanetary journey of 442 million miles (711 million kilometers). Six thruster engines will fire briefly for a “settling” burn that damps out deviations in pointing. Then the six main engines will ignite two by two in quick succession and will burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft, allowing it to be captured in an elliptical orbit.</div>
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This milestone will mark the culmination of 11 years of concept and development for MAVEN, setting the stage for the mission’s science phase, which will investigate Mars as no other mission has.</div>
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“We’re the first mission devoted to observing the upper atmosphere of Mars and how it interacts with the sun and the solar wind,” said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado in Boulder.</div>
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These observations will help scientists determine how much gas from Mars’ atmosphere has been lost to space throughout the planet’s history and which processes have driven that loss.</div>
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<b>En route</b></div>
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Procedures to line up MAVEN for proper orbit insertion began shortly after MAVEN launched in November 2013. These included two trajectory-correction maneuvers, performed in December 2013 and February 2014.</div>
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Calibration of the mission’s three suites of science instruments—the Particles and Fields Package, the Remote Sensing Package and the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer—was completed during the cruise phase to Mars.</div>
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“Every day at Mars is gold,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN’s project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The early checks of instrument and spacecraft systems during cruise phase enable us to move into the science collection phase shortly after MAVEN arrives at Mars.”</div>
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The voyage also gave the team an opportunity to take data on the interplanetary solar wind using the Fields and Particles Package.</div>
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Meanwhile, teams in California, Colorado, and Maryland carried out rehearsals of the entire orbit insertion twice. The science team also performed a weeklong simulation of the planning and implementation required to obtain science data. Two months prior to arrival at Mars, all instruments were turned off, in preparation for orbit insertion.</div>
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<b>Into orbit</b></div>
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During orbit insertion, MAVEN will be controlled by its on-board computers. By that time, the team will have uploaded the most up-to-date information about the spacecraft’s location, velocity and orientation. The insertion instructions will have been updated, and the fuel valves will be open, to warm the fuel to an operating temperature of about 77 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit (25 to 26 degrees Celsius).</div>
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If all goes well, the spacecraft will need no further commands from the ground. The important exception is that final trajectory corrections could be made, if needed, 24 hours or 6 hours prior to insertion. That would only happen, however, if the navigation team concluded that the spacecraft was coming in at too low of an altitude.</div>
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Otherwise, during the last 24 hours, the spacecraft will carry out preprogrammed procedures to make all systems as “quiet” as possible, which is the safest condition for orbit insertion. These steps include automatically executing a new version of the fault protection, which will tell the craft how to react to an on-board component anomaly leading up to or during orbit insertion.</div>
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In addition, the spacecraft will have to reorient itself so that the thrusters are pointed in the correct direction for the burn. In this final orientation, MAVEN’s high-gain antenna, which is used for most communication with the spacecraft, will point away from Earth. During that period, MAVEN’s low-gain antenna will be used for limited communication capacity at a reduced data rate.</div>
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At last, the insertion will begin. For the next 33 minutes, the craft will burn more than half the fuel onboard as it enters an orbit 236 miles (380 kilometers) above the northern pole.</div>
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Three minutes after the engines turn off, the MAVEN computers will reinstate the normal safeguards, reorient the spacecraft to point the high-gain antenna toward Earth, and reestablish normal communications. At that point, MAVEN will transmit the data obtained during the insertion back to Earth, along with information on the state of the spacecraft, and the MAVEN team will learn if everything worked properly.</div>
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“Then, there will be a sigh of relief,” said Carlos Gomez-Rosa, MAVEN mission and science operations manager at Goddard.</div>
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Later, the team will upload new instructions for the science portion of the mission, as well as turn on and check out the science instruments.</div>
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<b>New view of Mars</b></div>
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The team will perform six maneuvers to move the spacecraft from its insertion orbit into the four-and-a-half-hour orbit that will be used to gather science data.</div>
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This science orbit will be elliptical, with the spacecraft flying about 90 miles (approximately 150 kilometers) above the surface at periapsis, or closest point, in the orbit to “sniff” the upper atmosphere. At apoapsis, the farthest point from the surface, MAVEN will pull back 3,900 miles (roughly 6,300 kilometers) to observe the entire atmosphere.</div>
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With each pass, MAVEN will make measurements of the composition, structure and escape of atmospheric gases.</div>
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“MAVEN’s orbit through the tenuous top of the atmosphere will be unique among Mars missions,” said Jakosky. “We’ll get a new perspective on the planet and the history of the Martian climate, liquid water and planetary habitability by microbes.”</div>
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<span class="s1">To read the original NASA feature, please visit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-maven-spacecraft-makes-final-preparations-for-mars/#.VA4CkmRdWrE" target="_blank">http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-maven-spacecraft-makes-final-preparations-for-mars</a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-18181275718647796132013-12-03T11:51:00.003-07:002013-12-03T11:53:43.519-07:00MAVEN Spacecraft Successfully Launches to MarsAt 1:28 p.m. EST, the MAVEN spacecraft began its 10-month journey to Mars orbit, launching aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The Atlas V and the spacecraft have performed flawlessly in the early hours after launch. MAVEN’s “gull wing” solar arrays have deployed, sending power to the instruments onboard, and mission ground support personnel have confirmed the receipt of telemetry, indicating that communications with the spacecraft are proceeding as expected.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t9FeeWX-jEY/Up4n8GrWaaI/AAAAAAAABz8/JFbBoVbenBs/s1600/MAVEN_Launch.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t9FeeWX-jEY/Up4n8GrWaaI/AAAAAAAABz8/JFbBoVbenBs/s640/MAVEN_Launch.gif" width="425" /></a></div>
As of Nov. 25th, MAVEN operations are going smoothly with all spacecraft systems healthy. MAVEN uses 24-hour Deep Space Network communications coverage and all communication events have been nominal.
The mission is now in its early cruise mission phase and the spacecraft is approximately 1.39 million miles (2.24 million kilometers) from Earth. MAVEN’s current Sun-centered speed is 73,497 mph. The next big milestone for the team is a planned trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) on Dec. 3, followed by the power up of the eight science instruments between Dec. 4 and Dec. 10.
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“Thus far the MAVEN spacecraft has flown and operated as we had all hoped and planned,” said David F. Mitchell, MAVEN project manager. “There are some big events coming up in the days ahead but I couldn’t be more pleased with how the journey has started.”
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-13019461555867780162013-06-21T10:24:00.000-06:002013-06-21T10:24:39.348-06:00Environmental Testing<div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_2190" style="background-color: #f3ebe4; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(153, 140, 129); float: right; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-top: 7px; padding: 0px; width: 158px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2013/06/Guy-with-MAVEN_model-e1371571624621.png" style="clear: right; color: #5f5f74; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class=" " height="190" src="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2013/06/Guy-with-MAVEN_model-e1371571624621.png" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border: none rgb(66, 1, 3); margin: 0px; padding: 5px;" title="Guy Beutelschies" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guy Beutelschies</td></tr>
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<i>Guy Beutelschies is
the Chief Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company and MAVEN
Flight Systems Manager</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">How do you make
sure a spacecraft can survive in space?
Facing the sun, surfaces can get hotter than any desert. In the shade, it is colder than any
winter in Antarctica. The vacuum
of space can wreak havoc if you don’t use the right materials. Launch is even tougher. If you‘ve ever been lucky enough to see
a launch in person, you can feel the vibration rumbling in your chest from over
a mile away. Now imagine what the spacecraft
is experiencing as it sits on top of that “controlled explosion.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The answer is
testing, lots of testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
arrange the tests in roughly the same order as the spacecraft will experience
in its mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means we do
launch first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may not be
readily obvious, but the sound during launch is so intense that it can actually
break things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To simulate this, we
put the spacecraft in a special test chamber with enormous speakers and crank
up the sound to deafening levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although it is tempting to play some Led Zeppelin, we use a noise
spectrum that simulates the Atlas V rocket firing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The next one is
a vibration test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We put the
spacecraft on a large device called a shaker table that moves a plate back and
forth to provide the vibration that the vehicle will get on the rocket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After shaking it in the horizontal
axes, we rotate the piston-like device on the shaker table so that it moves the
spacecraft up and down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t
easy for me to see the spacecraft we’ve spent so much time carefully building
being shaken like that, but it was important to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Soon after
launch, we will then deploy the solar arrays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a tricky test on Earth because of the gravity down
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to make sure gravity
is not “helping” the arrays deploy during our ground testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To mitigate this, we turn the
spacecraft and deploy the arrays to the side so that the hinges are
perpendicular to the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
also used special stands to support the weight of each array while allowing
them to move freely across the floor as they deploy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We follow the same process for deployment tests on the
Articulated Payload Platform boom and the Solar Wind Electron Analyzer boom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The third major
environmental test involves radio waves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of our regular tests use cables between the ground equipment and
the spacecraft to send commands and receive telemetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the mission, our only link to
the spacecraft is through radio signals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For this test, we set up a special acoustics chamber to block out all
outside radio signals that might interfere, and then use special ground
antennas to talk to the spacecraft antennas as if MAVEN were out in space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tests also make sure that the various portions of the
spacecraft do not interfere with each other and that the radio waves from the
ground do not interfere with equipment on the spacecraft.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2013/06/MAVEN-move-into-TVAC.jpg" style="background-color: white; clear: right; color: #871d7e; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is lowered into a thermal vacuum (TVAC) chamber at Lockheed Martin, near Denver, Colorado. TVAC testing ensures that the spacecraft is able to withstand the temperature extremes it will encounter during its mission to study the upper atmosphere of Mars. (Courtesy Lockheed Martin)" class="size-large wp-image-2188 " height="295" src="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2013/06/MAVEN-move-into-TVAC.jpg" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border: none; margin: 0px; padding: 5px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is lowered into a thermal vacuum (TVAC) chamber at Lockheed Martin, near Denver, Colorado. TVAC testing ensures that the spacecraft is able to withstand the temperature extremes it will encounter during its mission to study the upper atmosphere of Mars. (Courtesy Lockheed Martin)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The final
environmental test is our biggest one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The MAVEN spacecraft is put in a thermal vacuum chamber; think giant
thermos bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once inside, we
pump out the air and flood the hollow walls with liquid nitrogen which brings
the temperature down to -290 degrees Fahrenheit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Giant lamps in the ceiling simulate the direct heat
from the sun. This test makes the spacecraft “feel” as if it’s in space. We
spend several weeks in vacuum simulating the entire mission from the heat of
the sun you get being near Earth, to the cold it will experience in the shadow
of Mars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is almost as tough on
the team as it is on the spacecraft because the test consoles need to be
monitored around the clock for the entire test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a lot of evenings, weekends, and graveyards
shifts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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This regimen of environmental testing may sound like a lot of work, but after spending years
designing and building it, we want to make sure everything work correctly. If
something needs to be fixed, we want to learn about it while it here on the
ground. Once we launch, there is no bringing it back to the shop for
repairs. These tests give us a lot of confidence that MAVEN will be ready for its launch on November 18</span><sup style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">With the recent
completion of thermal vacuum testing, the MAVEN spacecraft has now successfully
completed and passed all of its environmental test procedures. The team will
now focus on the remaining Launch Operations Readiness Tests (ORTs), a final
Planetary Protection review, and a spacecraft pre-ship review in preparation
for shipping MAVEN to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in early August.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-31879973317578332542013-04-23T15:18:00.003-06:002013-04-23T15:25:50.646-06:00A conversation about Education and Public Outreach<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><em style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">Stephanie Renfrow, MAVEN Education & Public Outreach lead & Laura Peticolas, EPO co-lead</em><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /><br /><br />Stephanie Renfrow (left) and Laura Peticolas lead education and public outreach efforts on behalf of MAVEN. In this joint post, the two leads discuss the program and what it means to them. (Courtesy MAVEN) </span></i><br />
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Let’s start by asking a question: how is it that you know about Mars and current space exploration? For example, how did you come to find this blog posting?</div>
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The MAVEN Education and Outreach program is MAVEN’s way of reaching out to the public, students, and educational audiences to share the excitement and learning-power that surrounds a mission of this size. We do this through social media, classroom programming, teacher professional development, public lectures, museum programs, and every other way we can think of to spread the word. Do you ever wonder, who are the people who bring that information to you online, to the staff at the museums you visit, or to the teachers who spend time with your children?</div>
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In a nutshell, the answer is: that’s us! The EPO team for MAVEN works to find ways to bring the mission to you through every possible avenue (except via traditional journalists, which is the purview of Public Affairs). We are in many ways translators and educators. We translate the mission, engineering, and science in ways that teachers, afterschool providers, museum/science center staff, and others can use.</div>
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So, for MAVEN, we first did some research to uncover what audiences would most benefit from learning about Mars’ atmosphere. This research, together with our team’s expertise, gave us a starting point in selecting partners and projects to develop a full education and public outreach plan. With the plan reviewed, tweaked, and approved, we’ve been able to use it as our blueprint in developing and implementing the program you see.</div>
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We also work hard to understand perspectives from many different people and learn in what ways other NASA Mars missions have been successful in engaging people, perhaps people like you. We even tap into our non-science circles from time-to-time. Both of us talked extensively with family and friends about the Mars Curiosity rover and how it connects to what we do. While our personal networks “rediscovered” our professional lives as they asked us questions, we learned what Curiosity educational activities really caught their attention and made them want to learn more. We now can apply what we learned from these conversations and many others with people from around the country into our own MAVEN educational programs.</div>
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In addition to enjoying the opportunity to answer everyone’s questions, the Curiosity landing served as an incredible reminder for just how exciting exploration of Mars is to millions of people. In our view, we have the best job on the whole mission: we get to share how your tax payer dollars take us to new scientific and technical heights, while finding meaningful ways to connect with your sense of wonder and facilitate making personal ties to science and the learning process. It is thrilling to explore Mars. It is thrilling to share the new discoveries to kindle real people’s excitement for science and exploration!</div>
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Over the coming months, we’ll be highlighting some of our EPO programming here on the blog—stay tuned to learn more, and in the mean time, visit “Education & Outreach” at <a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven" style="text-decoration: none;">http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven</a>!</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-61930511701132357172012-12-28T10:53:00.002-07:002012-12-28T11:06:32.913-07:00Did Solar Storms Blow Away the Atmosphere of Mars?<em>Janet Luhmann, MAVEN Science team</em><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;"><i>Dr. Janet Luhmann is a Senior Fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California Berkeley and the Principal Investigator of the IMPACT suite of instruments on the twin spacecraft STEREO mission. Currently, in addition to STEREO and the Cassini mission, she is studying Venus Express observations and helping prepare MAVEN for its upcoming investigation of the Martian upper atmosphere as one of the mission science leads. (Courtesy Janet Luhmann)</i></span><br />
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Humans tend to think that what is happening now represents the way things have always been. However, we know from our own experience and from investigations of the Earth’s past that there have been, and may still be, episodes of extremes, such as ice ages, major volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, catastrophic tsunamis and floods—some of which can happen several times in a short human lifetime. Cosmically, there have been asteroid impacts that changed Earth’s landscape and climate, and comet impacts that altered landscapes and brought materials to Earth while blasting others away. These episodes can individually and collectively alter the course of life on Earth or change the planet itself.
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Mars is exposed to many of the same types of events, and like those on Earth, the details of their historical impacts are speculative and debatable. It is hard to be a history “detective” when the evidence is often hidden or destroyed over time. As a result, questions related to Mars’ current frigid climate and related thin atmosphere are the focus of space missions and theoretical thinking and modeling. We do know that Mars lacks a planetary magnetic field like Earth’s, and, as a result, has been exposed to additional natural assaults.
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All of the planets in the solar system are submerged in a nearly continuous outflow of ionized hydrogen gas from the Sun. This “solar wind” is essentially the Sun’s outermost atmosphere. It flows outward because it is heated at its base and because the surrounding space is a relative vacuum. It is ionized because it is so hot—over a million degrees Kelvin—that the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms (protons) and their electrons cannot stay bound together. The resulting ionized gas, or plasma, also carries the solar magnetic field with it as it expands outward. We thus literally live in the solar atmosphere, but because Earth has a fairly strong magnetic field of its own, it is usually shielded from direct impact within a magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere deflects most of the solar wind around the Earth well above its atmosphere. Mars, however, is another story.
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The 2001 Mars Global Surveyor mission proved what earlier Russian missions hinted at—that the Martian magnetic field was too weak to prevent solar wind from penetrating its upper atmosphere. These Russian missions also found evidence that ionized elements from the Martian atmosphere were being carried away into the more distant reaches of the Solar System by solar wind. This “erosion” of atmosphere is currently being measured on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft.
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While it is apparent that atmosphere escape is occurring at Mars, the historical importance of that process is not as clear. In particular, if the rates of atmosphere escape measured by Mars Express occurred throughout Mars’ four billion year history, they would not have been enough to wipe away the early substantial Martian atmosphere.
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For decades, other space missions have studied how solar activity related to sunspots and geomagnetic storms at Earth affect conditions in interplanetary space. Today we know much more about how variable the solar wind can be, especially around the maximum of the Sun’s activity cycle. For example, we know that coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or large eruptions of material from the Sun’s corona, can enter the solar wind. There, CMEs can produce disturbances that cause extreme solar wind behavior by increasing its velocity, density, and magnetic field. (While normal solar wind flows outward from the Sun at about 350 km/s, the disturbed solar wind may flow out at more than one thousand km/s.)
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MAVEN will investigate what these extreme conditions do to Mars’ atmosphere erosion rates. The Mars Express measurements hint at increased rates, but energetic particle impacts on the spacecraft systems during storm events can compromise the measurements. The experiments on MAVEN have been specifically designed to definitively answer whether nature’s space weather storms increase atmosphere escape rates to historically important levels.
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Of course, MAVEN will need major solar activity in order to do its job. MAVEN should arrive at Mars at a time in the solar cycle that is traditionally rich in major events. Our MAVEN team will keep watching both the Sun and Mars, making use of the great <a href="http://www.spaceweather.com/" style="color: #871d7e; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">resources</a> for space weather observations currently at our disposal. We are also particularly lucky that the <a href="http://stereo.ssl.berkeley.edu/marsstatus.php" style="color: #871d7e; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">STEREO mission</a> is now observing conditions on the far side of the Sun, giving us the unique opportunity to effectively monitor space weather far from Earth—where Mars usually is and where MAVEN will be.
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<a href="http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif" style="color: #871d7e; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">SOHO real time solar activity</a>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uWaLqeBWGng/UN3cYzxQjqI/AAAAAAAAA3c/laJatQXs2YI/s320/SOHO_current_C2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: start;">SOHO, the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, is a project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind. The latest 48 hours worth of data are available as animated GIF movies (</span><em style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: start;">click image for current animation</em><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: start;">). The movies are updated every hour that scientists are in real-time contact with the satellite. (Courtesy LASCO/NRL/SOHO)</span></td></tr>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-66238630396829742922012-10-25T10:40:00.000-06:002012-12-28T10:41:37.790-07:00Preparing for Science Data<i>Dave Brain, MAVEN Science Team Co-Investigator </i><br />
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Teamwork.<br />
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The success of MAVEN hinges almost entirely on teamwork. As a scientist that uses data returned by spacecraft, it is sometimes easy for me to forget the number of people involved in making it possible for those squiggly lines of data to dance across my computer screen. After all, I simply need to load the data into my analysis software, make a plot, and learn something new about the planet I am studying (Ha! I laughed out loud as I wrote this because it is never this simple). I love doing this—a few times a year, as I look at my screen, I realize that I am the only person on the face of the Earth that has some new tidbit of information. The ‘A-ha!’ moment is an incredible rush, as is the period where I get to share the result with others.<br />
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Being involved in MAVEN has reminded me that science efforts are never independent. Thousands of people are working to make MAVEN successful. The instrument teams are testing and tweaking their instruments in preparation for delivery over the next few months to Lockheed Martin, where they will be incorporated onto the spacecraft. The spacecraft team has been working hard to get the many necessary components (electrical systems, communication systems, reaction wheels, etc.) onto the spacecraft, and preparing to receive the science instruments. I am in constant awe of the way in which these teams handle incredibly complex tasks and make them seem simple.<br />
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But what is the science team doing? After all don’t we need the data before we can do our work?
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PhccKril968/UN3XlN__bLI/AAAAAAAAA2s/5-bs-SlzbcI/s1600/brain_grandprismatic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PhccKril968/UN3XlN__bLI/AAAAAAAAA2s/5-bs-SlzbcI/s400/brain_grandprismatic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16.5px;"><i>Dr. Dave Brain is a Co-Investigator on the MAVEN science team and serves as a science advisor for the Invisible Mars: Science on a Sphere education and outreach project. Dr. Brain is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. (Courtesy Allison Baker)</i></span></td></tr>
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The science team has not been sitting idle. We are getting ready to use MAVEN data in a variety of ways. But working with spacecraft measurements is not always a straightforward endeavor. An enormous amount of a scientist’s time can be wasted on dealing with unorganized or unnecessarily complicated datasets. More time is left for making new discoveries when data are made easy to acquire and work with. MAVEN faces a particular challenge because data from all its instruments must be considered together in order to answer our main science questions (even the instruments need to work as a team!). But the datasets are fundamentally different. For example, some instruments make measurements at the location of the spacecraft, while others look at the atmosphere far from the spacecraft. These different datasets must all be well organized, and fit together in a way that the science team can easily get to their ‘A-ha!’ moments.<br />
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My job right now is to lead an effort to make tools for the science team that solve these challenges. For the past year we have been devising plans for tools that facilitate ‘Intercomparison and Visualization’ of MAVEN data. Over the next few months we will begin developing a web portal to the MAVEN data that will allow MAVEN scientists to view and obtain the spacecraft viewing geometry, data availability, and actual measurements in a variety of different ways. Users will be able to interact directly in the webpage with many of the plots, making our site a ‘first of its kind’ experience. In addition, we are building a ‘toolbox’ of especially useful software routines that can be used with MAVEN data, thus saving the individual scientists precious time developing their own routines. Importantly, both the web page and the software toolbox are tailored to using data from different instruments simultaneously.<br />
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Now that we have the tools designed, I’m excited to see them become reality over the coming months as developers and science team members collaborate on specific features and functionality. I am confident that we’re going to provide tools that make the scientist’s analysis tasks easier.<br />
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But it’s going to take teamwork.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-33002588106194153312012-09-14T11:53:00.002-06:002012-09-14T11:54:49.776-06:00MAVEN: Mars Atmospheric Loss<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When you take a look at Mars, you probably wouldn't think that it looks like a nice place to live. It's dry, it's dusty, and there's practically no atmosphere. But some scientists think that Mars may have once looked like a much nicer place to live, with a thicker atmosphere, cloudy skies, and possibly even liquid water flowing over the surface. So how do you go from something like this--to something like this? NASA's MAVEN spacecraft will give us a clearer idea of how Mars lost its atmosphere, and scientists think that several processes have had an impact.</div>
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One way a planet can lose its atmosphere is through a process called "sputtering." In this process, atoms are knocked away from the atmosphere due to impacts from energetic particles. Watch this brief video to learn more:</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-89336375694995306872012-08-31T15:19:00.000-06:002012-08-31T15:19:46.570-06:00The MAVEN Science Data Center<i>by Alex DeWolfe, MAVEN Science Data Center Manager</i>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Alex DeWolfe is the MAVEN Science Data Center Manager at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. (Courtesy Alex DeWolfe)</i> </span><br />
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I’m in charge of the Science Data Center (SDC) for MAVEN, part of the Science Operations Center at LASP. Our job is to store all of the science data produced during the mission in one place and make it easily accessible to all of the members of the science team, to generate preliminary plots of science data, and to make sure all of the science data is archived for future use and public access.<br />
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The SDC is part of the MAVEN “ground system,” the network of institutions, people, computers, and antennas here on Earth that communicates with the spacecraft, controlling it and handling all the data it sends back. Once the spacecraft goes into orbit around Mars in 2014, after all the instruments have been checked out and we know everything is working smoothly, we’ll start collecting science data and beaming it back to Earth. We’re going to a lot of trouble to build a spacecraft and send it to Mars, and the science data is the point of the whole mission! An important aspect of MAVEN science is that we plan to use science data from all the instruments together to get the most complete picture of the atmosphere possible. In order to do that, we have to have all of the data available to the entire team simultaneously. The MAVEN team is made up of a lot of people at different places around the U.S. and the world, and we need to have a central library of data where all of the team members can get the latest data products.<br />
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You might think that the bits come back from the spacecraft and go straight to the scientists, or that everything is processed in one central location. In reality, what the spacecraft sends us is a very low-level form of data that has to be refined before it’s usable by the science team. First, the “telemetry,” the stream of bits coming from the spacecraft, is collected by the Deep Space Network (DSN), using their worldwide network of huge radio antennas. The DSN hands the data off to the Mission Support Area at Lockheed Martin, which is responsible for spacecraft operations. They send the science and instrument data to us at the Science Operations Center, where we process the telemetry into a slightly more usable form.
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The MAVEN Science Data Center is part of the Science Operations Center at LASP, where MAVEN science data will be stored, accessed by the science team to generate preliminary plots of science data, and archived for future use and public access. (Courtesy LASP)</i> </span><br />
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The Payload Operations side of our group manages the instrument operations, making sure the instruments are working properly and planning upcoming observations. Meanwhile, the science data and a little bit of spacecraft data go into the storage system here at the SDC. We do some processing to generate “quick-look” plots, to give the science team a first look at the science data from the past few days, and then we make sure that all the data the team needs for more advanced processing is present and accounted for. We have to keep the data safe—we can’t have losses from hard drive crashes or power failures—but we also have to get it to the rest of the team as soon as possible.<br />
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After the rest of the team gets their hands on the data they need, they then turn it into real “science products.” These are mostly data files, which they can use to examine and compare various quantities that we’re measuring at Mars. These files are delivered back to the SDC, where we can keep them safe and share them with the rest of the team. After the first few months of the mission, we’ll come to another SDC task: sending the science data to the Planetary Data System, where it is permanently archived and made available to the wider scientific community.<br />
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I joined the MAVEN team as we were just starting to design the SDC systems, and now we’re starting to set up hardware and write software. It’s been fun so far, but I’m really looking forward to the next few years, in which we’ll put together the whole SDC and start operating it as MAVEN arrives at Mars. I feel tremendously fortunate to be part of this exciting mission.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-10350778977557582922012-06-26T12:45:00.001-06:002012-06-26T12:47:33.633-06:00The life of a MAVEN instrument lead<i>Jasper Halekas, SWIA instrument lead, University of California, Berkeley</i>
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While talking over a schedule issue with Dave Curtis (MAVEN Particles and Fields Package manager, and my immediate superior) the other day, I said to him, “I don’t know how you do it. It already feels like herding cats at my level. At your level it must feel like herding herds of cats.”
As it turns out, I think that conversation pretty well sums up my role as an instrument lead. I’m at just the right level that I have to manage a pretty big herd of cats, but not so high that I have to manage multiple herds.<br />
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By the same token, I’m at a level at which I can actually focus on what is going on at the individual cat level, rather than having to manage at the herd level. The items I have to juggle to make a Solar Wind Ion Analyzer (SWIA) come together include mechanical and electrical design and testing, software and firmware, data processing and analysis, and of course, science. My team of talented <strike>cats</strike> engineers does all of the really hard work in the trenches, and the instrument couldn’t be built without their hard work and dedication. I hold the overall responsibility for producing an instrument that will do the best possible job of returning great science data from Mars, but I depend on the engineers to design, assemble, and test each of the components of the instrument with incredible care and precision.<br />
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To do my job right, I have to understand my instrument at a systems level, so that I know how these various components work together. This perspective helps me identify when an issue with one element may affect others, or when one seemingly small change in one place may ripple through the system and result in unforeseen consequences elsewhere. In practice, this means that I do a little bit of everything, including designing electrostatic optics for the sensor, writing specifications documents, talking over mechanical details with the engineers, poring over circuit board schematics and layouts looking for noise sources, writing procedures, carrying out tests, performing calibrations, and developing and debugging data analysis software. And of course, writing and responding to lots and lots and lots of e-mails. Did I mention that I am developing a touch of “E-mail Anxiety Disorder” on this project?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-n4x-n-exZDk/T-oB81QY6CI/AAAAAAAAAyA/eAVVynvtwOc/s1600/IMG_20120619_173620.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-n4x-n-exZDk/T-oB81QY6CI/AAAAAAAAAyA/eAVVynvtwOc/s320/IMG_20120619_173620.jpg" width="259" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jasper Halekas is the MAVEN instrument lead for the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer (SWIA) and an Assistant Research Physicist at the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. His current research focuses on solar wind interaction with the solid surface, atmosphere/ exosphere, and crustal magnetic fields of the Moon and Mars. (Courtesy J. Halekas)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In addition to understanding my instrument and keeping track of the overall design, I have to be on the ball, on top of all of the activities happening on a day-to-day basis, and ready to immediately deal with the problems that inevitably crop up. Generally, dealing with a problem means some combination of testing to identify a cause, researching the issue, and talking to other scientists and engineers, in order to learn enough to make an informed decision as to the right path forward. Often, it means juggling schedules on a week-by-week, or sometimes a day-by-day level, to make sure that different parts of the instrument all come together at the right time. Sometimes, it means jumping into a gap and (for instance) helping write a procedure for applying conformal coating to an electronics board, or a rework/repair form. Other times, it means gowning up and heading into a clean room to test a circuit board that shows some unexpected behavior (carefully following planetary protection requirements, proper electrostatic discharge prevention protocol, etc.). All too often, it means writing and reviewing documents...and e-mails. (Did I mention the e-mails?)<br />
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At the end of the day, though, it all comes back to making sure that my instrument is going to do great science. At Mars, my instrument needs to measure the solar wind energy input into the Martian atmosphere, in order to determine how the solar wind drives atmospheric escape to space. To produce an instrument that will do the best job of performing that task, we test, test, test, and test some more. First, we build engineering models of everything. Once we think we have a basic design that works, we test each flight component, test every flight electronics board, test every mechanism, perform Comprehensive Performance Tests on the integrated flight instrument, and calibrate the flight instrument with an ion source in vacuum to characterize the optics. We bombard the instrument with electromagnetic frequencies, measure its emissions, shake it really hard, and heat it up and cool it down to extremes past anything we expect to see in cruise or on orbit at Mars. Then we test it some more. When we break things—as we inevitably do—we fix them and make them better so they won’t ever break in flight.<br />
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It’s easy to forget how intrinsically cool my job is, as I’m herding cats, wading through stacks of documents, and attending endless meetings. But, I try to never completely lose sight of the fact that we’re building something that is ultimately going to fly to Mars and send back amazing data. It’s absolutely worth working really hard on that task and making sure it’s done right, even if I do have a few nightmares and develop some neuroses about my inbox along the way.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-48827703320182450182012-05-31T09:21:00.000-06:002012-05-31T09:21:42.522-06:00MAVEN Profiles: Carlos Gomez-Rosa, MAVEN Systems EngineerThe second of a two-part Spanish-language series features MAVEN Systems Engineer Carlos Gomez-Rosa. The newly released video was produced by the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and is subtitled in English. Gomez-Rosa discusses his work on the ground communication system for the MAVEN mission and his experience at Goddard.
<iframe width="480" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_2O0JO3uU4E?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The series aims to make MAVEN more accessible to Spanish-speaking communities and compliments the MAVEN Red Planet: Read, Write, Explore! program, an educational project with a Spanish focus. The video may be particularly useful during Red Planet teacher training workshops, which target English as a Second Language, Spanish as a Second Language, and bilingual educators.
For more information about MAVEN Red Planet, please visit: http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/education-outreach/for-educators/red-planet/.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-10810165359219036582012-05-29T09:40:00.000-06:002012-05-31T09:21:17.891-06:00MAVEN Profiles: Sandra Cauffman, MAVEN Deputy Project ManagerA newly released NASA video features MAVEN Deputy Project Manager Sandra Cauffman speaking in Spanish about her work on the mission. Released today with English subtitles, the video highlights Cauffman’s career at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and details her integral role in coordinating the MAVEN budget and schedule. The video is the first in a two-part Spanish-language series that aims to make MAVEN more accessible to Spanish-speaking communities.
<iframe width="480" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JNEQUVPQUpA?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The video compliments the MAVEN Red Planet: Read, Write, Explore! program, an educational project with a Spanish focus. The video may be particularly useful during Red Planet teacher training workshops, which target English as a Second Language, Spanish as a Second Language, and bilingual educators.
For more information about MAVEN Red Planet, please visit: <a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/education-outreach/for-educators/red-planet/">http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/education-outreach/for-educators/red-planet/</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-46152618504170506492012-04-11T14:30:00.001-06:002012-04-11T14:40:28.490-06:00MAVEN Science Community Workshop – Dec. 2, 2012<b><a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/2012/04/05/maven-science-community-workshop/" target="blank_">MAVEN Science Community Workshop</a></b>
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<i>December 2, 2012</i>
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Location — downtown San Francisco (venue to be determined)
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We are planning a one-day workshop for the Mars science community to discuss the MAVEN mission. We will provide details on the mission plan, spacecraft, instruments, observations and sequencing, and anticipated data products and science return. We want to make detailed information available so that those scientists with an interest in using the data or applying it to models can begin preparing for data return and release, and so that those with an interest in proposing for the planned Participating Scientist program can learn details of what we are planning.<br />
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The workshop will be held on the Sunday immediately before the Fall AGU meeting (note that the dates for the AGU meeting have been changed to 3-7 December). It will be somewhere in the downtown San Francisco vicinity in order to make it easy for the participants, at a venue still to be determined.<br />
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Details will be posted on this web site as they solidify. Please email <a href="mailto:kathleen.cirbo@lasp.colorado.edu">Kathleen Cirbo</a> if you would like to be on the mailing list for receiving further information.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-40342326648345425482012-03-14T11:23:00.003-06:002012-03-14T11:23:56.094-06:00Latest MAVEN Science UpdateView the latest MAVEN science update in this (PDF) presentation from MAVEN PI Bruce Jakosky, Project Scientist Joe Grebowsky, and Project Manager David Mitchell. The presentation was given at the 2012 Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group meeting in Washington, DC.
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<a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2012/03/MAVEN_MEPAG-2012.pdf" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="100" width="125" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5xNI7dRF8rw/T2DTcea13lI/AAAAAAAAAk0/O8ikU7mAOz0/s320/MAVEN_MEPAG_thumb.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2012/03/MAVEN_MEPAG-2012.pdf">http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/2012/03/MAVEN_MEPAG-2012.pdf</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-15734014445771848772012-02-28T09:45:00.002-07:002012-02-28T09:46:54.935-07:00A stressful test<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0JPiTzp1WZFEgW4jAUebXoLYVmtMPl8EpyvlatUO_tav1UC5V5Kv9lnlNIlrODVkNEWuPHJYRK4eye7b348NzVl23ZJiVFM6-hzZDLczNOlCgh_ih85FAAMs-nla3Lm2wYC-vGlma9RE/s1600/Spacecraft+in+Reaction+Structure_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="278" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0JPiTzp1WZFEgW4jAUebXoLYVmtMPl8EpyvlatUO_tav1UC5V5Kv9lnlNIlrODVkNEWuPHJYRK4eye7b348NzVl23ZJiVFM6-hzZDLczNOlCgh_ih85FAAMs-nla3Lm2wYC-vGlma9RE/s320/Spacecraft+in+Reaction+Structure_2.jpg" /></a></div>
As I stood watching the static loads test of the MAVEN spacecraft structure, my thoughts went back to my high school physics class, where we built bridges out of balsa wood. To see which bridge was the strongest, the teacher applied a force to the center until the bridge broke. Each student would cringe as the pressure increased, waiting for the sound of splintering wood. I had that same feeling now.
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To continue reading this post, visit the MAVEN website: <a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/2012/02/27/a-stressful-test/"> A stressful test</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-24926260019219590262011-09-28T09:58:00.000-06:002011-09-28T09:58:31.516-06:00MAVEN Core Structure CompleteNASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission has reached a new milestone. Lockheed Martin has completed building the primary structure of the MAVEN spacecraft at its Space Systems Company facility near Denver. The MAVEN spacecraft is scheduled to launch in November 2013 and will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ejXPLeEsuRs/ToNDfJZZ1pI/AAAAAAAAAd0/VAzC6qai_QQ/s1600/MAVEN%2BStructure%2B%2540LMSSC_9-08-11%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="256" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ejXPLeEsuRs/ToNDfJZZ1pI/AAAAAAAAAd0/VAzC6qai_QQ/s320/MAVEN%2BStructure%2B%2540LMSSC_9-08-11%255B1%255D.jpg" /></a></div><br />
To read the full news release, visit:<br />
<a href="http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/2011/09/26/maven-mission-primary-structure-complete/">MAVEN Mission Primary Core Structure has been completed at Lockheed Martin</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-64776215778946409472011-08-26T15:31:00.000-06:002011-08-26T15:31:26.326-06:00MAVEN is a Team Effort<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;"></span><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Several people have asked me what role NASA HQ plays in the development of our mission and whether we on the <em>MAVEN</em> team have free reign to move forward as we see fit. As Principal Investigator of <em>MAVEN</em>, I led the development of the original concept, assembled the team, and led the effort to write the competitive proposals and reports prior to our selection. Having moved into development, I retain the overall authority and responsibility for the mission. We have a Project Manager (David F. Mitchell, at GSFC) who reports to me; he oversees the implementation, and he heads a Project Office that carries out the broad management functions.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">However, we are implementing the mission as part of the larger Mars Exploration Program that is itself a part of the NASA program. As part of this broader program, we work closely with a lot of people and organizations that are outside of the project itself.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Mars Exploration Program (MEP) at NASA HQ oversees the Mars program as a whole, developing the annual budget and setting policy for the Program. At present, the Mars Program includes three active missions (<em>Mars Odyssey</em>, <em>Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter</em>, and the <em>Opportunity</em> rover) and three missions in development (<em>Mars Science Laboratory</em>, scheduled for launch this November, <em>MAVEN</em>, and the 2016 <em>ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter</em>), and is planning for future missions beyond those (including a possible 2018 rover and a Mars sample return mission). A Mars lander is also in the ongoing competition for the next opportunity in the Discovery program.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">We work closely with our NASA HQ Program Executive, Lisa May, and our Program Scientist, Mary Mellott. They represent the project at NASA HQ to the MEP and the Planetary Science Division, and to the Science Mission Directorate as a whole. They work on a lot of issues related to the planning and implementation of <em>MAVEN</em> and to the interfaces between institutions and individuals.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">NASA HQ assigns responsibility for the Mars Program to the Mars Program Office (MPO) located at JPL. The MPO oversees implementing the approved missions and planning and developing future missions. From <em>MAVEN</em>’s narrow perspective, they provide oversight of our technical progress and track issues that might affect (or be affected by) other components of the Mars Program. We work closely in these areas with Peter Doms, who is the <em>MAVEN</em> mission manager and our direct contact in the Mars Program Office. Peter and Lisa work closely together to ensure strong coordination between NASA HQ and the MPO. And the heads of the two offices—Doug McCuistion (MEP Program Director at NASA HQ) and Fuk Li (Mars Program Manager at JPL)—work together to ensure that the Mars Program as a whole runs smoothly.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Although <em>MAVEN</em> is a PI-led mission, responsibility for the project has been assigned to Goddard Space Flight Center. We work with the different groups at GSFC to ensure that we are adhering to appropriate engineering practices (which is a much broader task than it might seem at first) and to appropriate management and business practices. Our Project Manager interacts regularly with the Director of Flight Projects (George Morrow) and the Center Director (Rob Strain) and his Deputy (Rick Obenschain). They ensure that we have access to the resources we need at GSFC to implement the mission, and they help us to resolve technical and programmatic issues as they come up.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">In addition, the project has an independent Standing Review Board, appointed with approval of NASA HQ and GSFC. The SRB consists of senior people who have previous experience in carrying out spacecraft missions. For instance, the SRB Chair, George Pace, was the Project Manager for the 2001 <em>Mars Odyssey</em> mission. The SRB conducts reviews of our project at roughly yearly intervals, checking our progress and status against a NASA-wide set of rigorous standards and the Mars Exploration Program’s top-level requirements on <em>MAVEN</em>.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g2u-UNxpTFY/TlgQLGmQuBI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/jAW9EMWizMY/s1600/Standing+Review+Board.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g2u-UNxpTFY/TlgQLGmQuBI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/jAW9EMWizMY/s320/Standing+Review+Board.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Members of the <i>MAVEN</i> Standing Review Board during one of our reviews. They’ve been through projects like this before and know where many of the potential pitfalls are.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Yes, <em>MAVEN</em> is a PI-led mission. But we interact almost daily with our colleagues at NASA HQ and in the MPO. We’re responsible for implementing the mission safely and successfully, but a lot of coordination is necessary to ensure that we’re on track, that we identify and address problems early, and that we focus on the key issues. All of these groups are making significant contributions to the development of <em>MAVEN</em>, and are an important part of our team.</span></div><div style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
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</div></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-77160932882444118742011-08-11T10:30:00.000-06:002011-08-11T10:30:41.477-06:00Where is MAVEN in The Development Process?With MAVEN having just recently passed its Critical Design Review and now having just over two years until launch, this is a good time to take stock of where we are in the process. We originally began putting the mission together in early 2004, knowing that NASA would have an open competition to propose Mars missions in the near future.<br />
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<b>2004-2006.</b> Developed concept, assembled science team and partners.<br />
<b>2006.</b> Submitted MAVEN proposal. Selected for Phase A study (more-detailed development of mission concept).<br />
<b>2007.</b> Carried out Phase A study, and submitted full Concept Study Report.<br />
<b>2008.</b> Carried out a second Phase A study at the direction of NASA HQ. MAVEN was selected for development in Sept. 2008.<br />
<b>2008.</b> Began Phase B (developing detailed mission, requirements, and design). Further refined requirements to lower-level systems, culminating in a Systems Requirements Assessment review in summer 2009.<br />
<b>2009-2010.</b> Continued Phase B (preliminary design stage), leading to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) in summer 2010. Results were evaluated within NASA, with a Confirmation Review with senior NASA officials in October 2010; confirmation meant that we were officially approved as a mission and now would move forward into full-scale development.<br />
<b>2010-2011.</b> Carried out Phase C (detailed or final design stage), leading to Critical Design Review (CDR) in summer 2011. The CDR generally marks the transition from designing the components, the spacecraft, and the mission operations to building hardware and the operations system.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xpmLGSdzm_Y/TkQB6T7FsGI/AAAAAAAAAc0/qHCpc7tlS-U/s1600/MAVEN_CDR_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xpmLGSdzm_Y/TkQB6T7FsGI/AAAAAAAAAc0/qHCpc7tlS-U/s400/MAVEN_CDR_small.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px;">The MAVEN team at the Critical Design Review in July 2011. Several hundred additional scientists, engineers, and support personnel are contributing to the success of MAVEN, but were not present at the review. (Courtesy MAVEN)</span><br />
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That brings us up to today. Looking forward:<br />
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<b>2011-2012.</b> Complete Phase C, which involves building the flight components – the instruments and the spacecraft components.<br />
<b>2012-2013.</b> Integration and test. The components are assembled onto the spacecraft bus, building up a complete orbiter consisting of the spacecraft and the science instruments. The components are tested along the way, and the entire orbiter is tested in the environments in which it will need to operate.<br />
<b>2013.</b> Launch campaign. The observatory ships to Florida in August of 2013, for launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station facilities there (NASA’s Kennedy Space Center sits adjacent to CCAFS). There is a three-month “campaign” leading to stacking it on the Atlas V rocket, fueling the spacecraft and rocket, and launching it. We have a 20-day window in which we can launch on a path that will get us to Mars.<br />
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To put the process into perspective, we’ve gone through nearly 80 % of the time from the original concept up until launch, but we still have about 2/3 of the effort to go (judging by budgeted work years of effort). The largest fraction of that total effort will take place over this next year!<br />
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After launch, it takes 10 months to get to Mars, a month or so to “commission” the spacecraft and get ready to make science measurements, and then we have a primary mission of a year. From start to finish – cradle to grave – it will have been a full twelve years!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-31687825022477339152011-07-25T15:10:00.000-06:002011-07-25T15:10:18.917-06:00MAVEN Mission Completes Major Milestone<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">The mission reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review (CDR).<br />
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MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space through time, providing answers about Mars climate evolution. It will accomplish this by measuring the current rate of escape to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes to allow extrapolation backward in time. </span><br />
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</span><br />
So, You Want to Build a Satellite: Part Two (Courtesy NASA/GFSC)<br />
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</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">To read the full NASA press release, visit:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/news/maven-cdr.html">MAVEN CDR </a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-2119718394276095752011-07-25T15:03:00.000-06:002011-07-25T15:03:23.845-06:00Viking Lander 35th AnniversaryJuly 20 was the 35th anniversary of the Viking I lander’s successful landing on the Mars surface in 1976. That mission was a major turning point in our understanding of Mars, providing detailed geological, chemical, and geophysical data that fueled science analysis for more than two decades.<br />
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Many people think that the Viking emphasis on searching for life (which, in hindsight, utilized the wrong approach for doing this) killed off Mars exploration for two decades. I see it differently — that the lack of a scientific framework for asking questions about Mars made it difficult to propose viable new missions. However, the Viking data, in combination with other data sources and terrestrial analysis, made it possible to put forward the scientific framework that we are working under today. That very successful framework suggests that environmental conditions on Mars were such that life could have existed at some time in the past or, under the surface, even at the present. The missions of the last two decades have all been based on this framework, and the upcoming missions are as well.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TlKCxWz_x90/Ti3ZYFDh-CI/AAAAAAAAAZs/En6cQMI1ebU/s1600/Viking%2BLander.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TlKCxWz_x90/Ti3ZYFDh-CI/AAAAAAAAAZs/En6cQMI1ebU/s320/Viking%2BLander.png" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"></span></div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The Viking Lander spacecraft that made the first landing on Mars on July 20, 1976. (Courtesy NASA)</span></i><br />
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The Mars Science Laboratory, which launches this November, is set to explore surface chemistry as it is relevant to possible life. And, of course, the MAVEN mission will explore the history of the atmosphere and climate. We pitched our mission as related to life because of this climate connection, and it’s that strong connection that makes it of so much interest to the broader Mars science community.<br />
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So, as we celebrate our success to date as we move into the “build” phase of the project and move forward into the all-consuming effort during the coming two years prior to launch, keep in mind that we are part of a broad program of Mars exploration that goes back many decades. I’m very excited and very much looking forward to the important contributions that MAVEN will make to understanding the climate of Mars and to the “life” question. To Mars!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-437661252792902222011-06-07T14:43:00.002-06:002011-06-07T14:47:23.102-06:00What goes around comes aroundOnce we’re in orbit around Mars, the NGIMS instrument will release its cover. This “break-off cap” seals the inlet to the instrument, keeping it free from possible contamination prior to beginning the science mission. Once the cap is released, it no longer is connected to the MAVEN spacecraft and will be in its own independent orbit around Mars. Do we have to be concerned about the potential for the cap to come back and hit the spacecraft at some later time?<br />
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When the cap is ejected, it moves away from the spacecraft at approximately 3 m/s. At that point, it’s in its own distinct orbit around Mars. Because it was ejected from the spacecraft, the cap’s orbit crosses the MAVEN orbit at at least one point. Thus, there is the possibility that it could eventually have a close encounter with the spacecraft on a later orbit and possibly even collide with it. It would be pretty embarrassing if a collision occurred, especially if it damaged or destroyed the spacecraft!<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VXvwLwgsW_Y/Te6NCfJ2YqI/AAAAAAAAAPU/UG9E1NEsyDA/s1600/NGIMS_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VXvwLwgsW_Y/Te6NCfJ2YqI/AAAAAAAAAPU/UG9E1NEsyDA/s320/NGIMS_full.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Diagram showing the NGIMS instrument. The inlet to the instrument is covered by the break-off cap at the very far left. (Courtesy NASA/GSFC)</span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-64968346547824454332011-05-13T15:29:00.000-06:002011-05-13T15:29:29.048-06:00Critical Design Review “Season”There’s been a lot going on with MAVEN since the last PI blog post. The instrument teams have built “engineering models” of each instrument; these allow the teams to test out the hardware and software now, and later to test procedures on the ground before doing them on the spacecraft after launch. They’ve done early interface tests with spacecraft test hardware that ensure that the instruments and the spacecraft can talk to and understand each other. Some flight components are being built early, for both the spacecraft and the instruments. The mission design and navigation team is refining the trajectory for the cruise, orbit-insertion, and science-mapping phases of the mission. And the mission operations team is finishing the design of the ground data system, the science planning process, and the ops processes.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8I_-KwaxA1g/Tc2iexO1SqI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/Th76wo67OSI/s1600/EUV%2Bsensor.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="150" width="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8I_-KwaxA1g/Tc2iexO1SqI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/Th76wo67OSI/s200/EUV%2Bsensor.png" /></a></div><br />
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Continue reading this post: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150186390026186">MAVEN PI Blog on Facebook</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-30683474570895639702011-04-28T12:57:00.006-06:002011-04-28T15:09:38.629-06:00MAVEN PI, Bruce Jakosky - The 2013 MAVEN mission to Mars<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v/IKQBcCk1E4M?fs=1" width="425">&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;</iframe><br />
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MAVEN PI, Bruce Jakosky discusses the upcoming mission to Mars in this Dec. 2009 public lecture at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-801847658178707311.post-15989152214407147802011-02-18T09:58:00.001-07:002011-02-18T10:09:59.688-07:00Mars: The Search for Water, the Search for LifeA great video, detailing the geological features indicating a historical presence of water on Mars. From the University of Arizona and the Phoenix mission:<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g7CtSN19fR4?fs=1" width="425">&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;</iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12517516537601149247noreply@blogger.com0