NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft began orbiting Mars on Sunday, on a mission to study how the Red Planet’s climate changed over time from warm and wet to cold and dry.
The unmanned orbiter has traveled more than 10 months and 711 million kilometers to reach Mars for a first-of-its-kind look at the planet’s upper atmosphere.
“Wow, what a night. You get one shot with Mars orbit insertion and MAVEN nailed it tonight,” project manager David Mitchell said.
Photo: EPA
Scientists hope the data from the MAVEN spacecraft will help them understand what happened to the water on Mars and the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere several billion years ago.
How Mars lost its atmosphere is one of science’s biggest mysteries. The answers could shed light on the planet’s potential to support life — even if that was just microbial life — long ago.
MAVEN’s findings are also expected to help add to knowledge of how humans could survive on a future visit to the Red Planet, perhaps as early as 2030.
“Mars is a cool place, but there is not much atmosphere,” John Clarke of the MAVEN science team said.
“It is very cold; it is well below zero. The atmosphere is about half a percent of what we are breathing,” he said.
“But we know that Mars could change and it was probably different in the past. There is a lot of evidence of flowing water on the surface from Mars’ ancient history,” he said.
Next, MAVEN will enter a six-week phase for tests.
It will then begin a one-year mission of studying the gases in Mars’ upper atmosphere and how it interacts with the sun and solar wind.
“We are looking at early November as the official start of science,” MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said.
Much of MAVEN’s year-long mission will be spent circling the planet 6,003km above the surface.
However, it will execute five deep dips to a distance of just 125km above the Martian landscape to get readings of the atmosphere at various levels.
NASA is the world’s most successful space agency at sending rovers and probes to Mars, and past missions have included the Viking 1 and 2 in 1975 and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005.
The US space agency’s latest robotic vehicle, Curiosity, is exploring Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, looking for interesting rocks and returning data on whether the Martian environment shows evidence of a past ability to support life.
Later this week, an Indian spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), is expected to reach Mars.
The unmanned MOM probe is set to enter Mars’s orbit in the coming days after 10 months in space, marking India’s first mission to the Red Planet.
“We are anxiously awaiting the arrival in two days of the India MOM mission and we are hoping for their success,” Jakosky said.
“We are sending them the best wishes from the entire MAVEN team for a successful orbit insertion and mission,” he said.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS