All things have gone according to plan, NASA spokesperson says, regarding the agency's newest success, the MAVEN spacecraft. Firing its six rocket engines only moments ago, initiating a 33-minute-long descent into the elliptical orbit around Mars, the MAVEN spacecraft has finally met its end goal after a 10 month journey to the red planet.
Known simply as MAVEN, an acronym that stands for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN", the bus-sized spacecraft is a $671 million investment made by NASA to monitor the upper atmosphere of our nearest neighbor, and host to a plethora of new experimental projects that may one day lead to the colonization made by humans on the dry surface.
Having travelled 442 million miles to reach its destination, MAVEN reached the red planet this evening, Sept. 21 at 9:50pm to begin the even longer year-long journey ahead wherein MAVEN will orbit and report findings from Mars' upper atmosphere. Unlike its predecessors, like the Mars rovers Curiosity and Spirit, MAVEN has no plans of landing on the Martian surface. Instead, the NASA spacecraft will spend its time and limited amount of energy to analyze the gases of Mars' upper atmosphere and how they interact solar winds. In particular, NASA researchers are eager to investigate what happened to the Martian atmosphere which once supported a warmer, wetter world than the dry planet of Mars today.
"The MAVEN science mission focuses on answering questions about where did the water that was present on early Mars go? Where the carbon dioxide went?" principal investigator of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, Bruce Jakosky says. "These are important questions for understanding the history of Mars, its climate, and its potential to support at least microbial life."
Initial contact with the red planet will be made at Mars' northern pole, and will spend the end of September acclimating to the elliptical orbit before turning its focus to the comet known as "Siding Spring" which will pass by Mars in early October.
