TAGS: MARS, NASA
WASHINGTON: Nasa's MAVEN spacecraft is set to enter the Mars orbit on Sunday night, two days before India's first interplanetary spacecraft Mangalyaan is due to slip into the martian orbit on Tuesday.
NASA's MAVEN craft will live up to its formal name -- the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution craft -- by helping scientists figure out how ancient Mars changed so dramatically into the planet we know today.
It will be the first mission devoted to studying the upper Martian atmosphere as a key to understanding the history of Mars' climate, water and habitability.
The mission's combination of detailed measurements at specific points in Mars' atmosphere and imaging provides a powerful tool for understanding the properties of the Red Planet's upper atmosphere.
Jakosky said MAVEN will help unravel that mystery by using its scientific instruments to measure the composition and escape of gases in the Martian atmosphere.
MAVEN will study the top of the atmosphere to determine the extent to which losing gas to space might have been the driving mechanism behind climate change, Jakosky said.
The engines will ignite and burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft, allowing it to be pulled into Mars' elliptical orbit within a period of 35 hours.
Following orbit insertion, MAVEN will begin a six-week commissioning phase that includes manoeuvreing the spacecraft into its final orbit and testing its instruments and science mapping commands.
Thereafter, MAVEN will begin its one-Earth-year primary mission to take measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars' upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.
India's first mission to the Red Planet, the Mars Orbiter Mission, is set to arrive a few days after MAVEN does. The director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Jim Green, says the United States and India are interested in cooperating as their crafts gather data about the planet.
"The MAVEN science mission focuses on answering questions about where did the water that was present on early Mars go, about where did the carbon dioxide go," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado' Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
MAVEN was launched Nov 18, 2013, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying three instrument packages.
No comments:
Post a Comment