NASA's MAVEN spacecraft enters Mars orbit

WASHINGTON DC - NASA's 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.

"Based on observed navigation data, congratulations. MAVEN is now in orbit," said Dave Folta of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center just before 10:30 p.m. (0230 GMT).

The unmanned orbiter has traveled more than 10 months and 442 million miles (711 million kilometers) to reach Mars for a first-of-its kind look at the planet's upper atmosphere.

The data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft aims to help scientists 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," said John Clarke of the MAVEN science team.

"It is very cold, it is well below zero. The atmosphere is about half a percent of what we are breathing," he added.

"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's ancient history."

Mission begins

Next, MAVEN will enter a six-week phase for tests.

It will then begin a one-year mission of studying the gases in Mars's upper atmosphere and how it interacts with the sun and solar wind.

Much of MAVEN's year-long mission will be spent circling the planet 3,730 miles above the surface.

However, it will execute five deep dips to a distance of just 78 miles 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, will be on course to reach Mars.

The unmanned MOM probe is set to enter Mars's orbit in the next few days after 10 months in space, marking India's first mission to the planet to search for evidence of life.

"We are not the only show that is happening on Mars this week," said Gary Napier, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, during a NASA television broadcast of the orbital insertion.

"Everyone at NASA and its partners wishes that team all the best."

source: interaksyon.com

NASA: Mars Curiosity Beams First High-Res Pic

In an almost giddy late-night press conference, the NASA Mars laboratory Science team celebrated the Curiosity Rover’s successful landing on a “nice, flat spot — beautiful, really beautiful” on Mars. It’s a patch of dusty land that’s since been immortalized in a couple of low-resolution thumbnails that arrived at mission control moments after Curiosity touched down. Now there’s a new pic — and Curiosity’s new home is coming into focus.

The image arrived early this morning, around the same time that the MLS team sat down for their first post-landing press conference. According to the NASA.gov web site, the image was captured with Curiosity’s fish eye lens (part of a pair of lenses) and is actually half of its full resolution capabilities. The camera lens was protected by a dust cover during landing, which has since sprung open. “The cameras are looking directly into the sun, so the top of the image is saturated. Looking straight into the sun does not harm the cameras. The lines across the top are an artifact called ‘blooming’ that occurs in the camera’s detector because of the saturation,” said NASA.

The landing “looked extremely clean,” said Dr. Adam Steltzner, Mechanical Systems Lead, who has been with the mission since its inception almost a decade ago. Steltzner’s been mostly unknown to the public, but in recent days the scientist has been thrust into the spotlight. He joined Twitter less than a week ago and has been tweeting a mission play-by-play and amassing followers ever since. This was his last tweet before finally grabbing some shut-eye:

John Holdren, the President’s science advisor and the director of Office of Science and Technology Policy, called the effort, “The most challenging mission ever attempted in the history of robotics space exploration.”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden cheered the Curiosity landing, explaining that “new technologies never invented or attempted before were created for this journey,” and that the odds for success were actually just 40%.

“Curiosity, the most sophisticated Rover ever built is now on the surface of the red planet,” said Bolden, “where it will seek to answer age old questions about whether or not life ever existed there on Mars or if the planet can sustain life in the future.”

NASA, which recently shuttered its Space Shuttle program and has outsourced manned space flight to a consortium of private companies, including SpaceX, spent a reported $2.5 billion on the Curiosity mission. NASA funding has long been a point of contention for space program critics, and Bolden may have been addressing them when he added this impromptu comment during the press conference:

“Tonight, I’m probably not going to include the counties, at least 4 countries — and I won’t name them– who are on Mars, and they’re on Mars because they went with the United States. I know this may sound a little strange in this international environment, but I want everyone to understand what I say and what I mean when I say: Our leadership is gonna make this world better”

source: mashable.com