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NASA To Send a MAVEN to Mars
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Mars MAVEN, artist's concept/NASA
Awhile back I'd written about some basic NASA acronyms, and this one goes to the head of the class. In 2013, NASA plans to send the MAVEN scientific spacecraft to further study Mars.
In a volatile competition that included a nine-month bid delay for one contender's conflict of interest, NASA finally gave the nod to the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft will study the planet's atmosphere and climate history, as well as peering at how likely Mars is to be habitable later on.
One of the mysteries the MAVEN is intended to research: how Mars lost its atmosphere.
"The loss of Mars' atmosphere has been an ongoing mystery," declared Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Washington, D.C. headquarters."
The mission's pricetag: $485 million. Lockheed Martin's Littleton, CO facility will build the spacecraft, which is based on designs from from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the 2001 Mars Odyssey missions.
The team will get down to work next fall, according to NASA. Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder was selected as Principal Investigator.
The project's budget includes $6 million to fund mission planning and technology development at U of C over the next year. The Mars MAVEN project will be managed by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md.,
Getting to the award hasn't been easy. In December of last year, after the competition had been narrowed to two from 20 contenders, NASA was forced to suspend the process and begin anew after a conflict of interest was declared by a competitor other than U of C. Those details haven't been released, the agency said, because of concerns over "proprietary information."
When the MAVEN arrives at Mars in fall of 2014, it will continue the exploration mission of prior Mars probes, and possibley provide additional communications for rovers already on Mars. The new spacecraft joins a Mars fleet that includes:
- the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, is a multipurpose spacecraft that carries the most powerful telescopic camera ever flown to another planet. The camera can show Martian landscape features as small as a kitchen table from low orbital altitudes. The mission is examining potential landing sites for future surface missions and providing a communications relay for other Mars spacecraft.
- the 2001 vintage Mars Odyssey is determining the composition of the Red Planet's surface by searching for water and shallow buried ice. The spacecraft also is studying the planet's radiation environment
Here's the game plan for the MAVEN. Using its onboard propulsion system, the spacecraft will enter an elliptical orbit that will send it cruising above the planet at 90 to 3,870 miles above the planet. The probe will cary eight science instruments.
MAVEN joins a famous team already working on Mars via the Mars Scout program. The wildly-successful Phoenix Mars Lander, now at work under an extension, has sent back the scientific taste of Martian water.
The Scout program is designed to send a series of small, low-cost, principal investigator-led missions to the Red Planet.
Imagine when MAVEN, like the Phoenix Lander, begins to Twitter. "The MAVEN says" will add a snappy little phrase to the stream of scientific dialogue from NASA science probes exploring our universe.
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