NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, sent to Mars to explore its upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the Sun and solar wind, has completed one Martian year – that’s almost two Earth years – in the orbit around Mars.
This image shows an artist concept of NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
MAVEN, part of NASA’s Mars Scout program, launched on November 18, 2013, and successfully entered the orbit of the fourth planet from the Sun on September 21, 2014.
During its time at Mars, the orbiter has answered many questions about the planet.
“Taken together, the MAVEN results tell us that loss of gas from the atmosphere to space has been the major force behind the climate having changed from a warm, wet environment to the cold, dry one that we see today,” said MAVEN principal investigator Dr. Bruce Jakosky, a researcher with the University of Colorado.
MAVEN has made the following discoveries and science results:
(i) discovery of a cloud of dust surrounding the Red Planet that likely is interplanetary dust (debris from comets) that is falling in toward the planet;
(ii) discovery of diffuse aurorae that are widespread over the planet and that do not depend on the presence of a global or local magnetic field to focus the particles from the Sun that drive them;
(iii) discovery of a layer of metal ions in the Martian ionosphere that comes from the falling in of interplanetary dust;
(iv) most thorough and accurate determination of (a) the rate of loss of gas from the Martian atmosphere to space and of how it is controlled by the Sun; (b) the rate of escape of atmospheric gas to space in present time; and (c) how the Sun controls the structure, composition, and variability of the upper atmosphere, leading to escape of gas from the top of the atmosphere to space;
(v) detection of a ‘polar plume’ of ions escaping to space that had not previously been seen.
MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph obtained this image of Mars on July 13, 2016, when the planet appeared nearly full when viewed from the highest altitudes in the MAVEN orbit. The ultraviolet colors of Mars have been rendered in false color, to show what we would see with ultraviolet-sensitive eyes. Image credit: NASA / Goddard / University of Colorado / LASP.
MAVEN has been approved for an additional two-year extended mission that will run through the end of September 2018.
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This article is based on a press-release issued by NASA.
