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Mars Base

MAVEN thunders to Space on Journey to Study Red Planet's Watery History and Potential f... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...history-and-potential-for-life

scibyte110 MAVEN

shared by Mars Base on 19 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) space probe thundered to space
  • Nov. 18
  • from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 at 1:28 p.m. EST atop a powerful Atlas V rocket
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • It will take the spacecraft 10 months to reach the Red Planet, with arrival scheduled for Sept. 22, 2014
  • MAVEN’s purpose is to accomplish world class science after arriving at Mars and completing a check-out period before it can finally begin collecting science data
  • MAVEN will answer key questions about the evolution of Mars, its geology and the potential for the evolution of life
  • Mars was once wet billions of years ago,
  • Now it’s a cold arid world, not
  • hospitable to life
  • want to determine what were the drivers of that change
  • What is the history of Martian habitability, climate change and the potential for life
  • MAVEN will study Mars upper atmosphere to explore how the Red Planet may have lost its atmosphere over billions of years
  • It will measure current rates of atmospheric loss to determine how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and water
  • The MAVEN probe carries nine sensors in three instrument suites
  • The Particles and Fields Package,
  • contains six instruments to characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of Mars.
  • The Remote Sensing Package,
  • will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.
  • The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer,
  • will measure the composition of Mars’ upper atmosphere.
  • Over the course of its one-Earth-year primary mission, MAVEN will observe all of Mars’ latitudes at altitudes ranging from 93 miles to more than 3,800 miles.
  • MAVEN will execute five deep dip maneuvers during the first year, descending to an altitude of 78 miles. This marks the lower boundary of the planet’s upper atmosphere.
Mars Base

India's 1st Mars Mission Celebrates 100 Days and 100 Million Kilometers from Mars Orbit... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ising-right-behind-nasas-maven

scibyte135 India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • India’s
  • Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM, has just celebrated 100 days and 100 million kilometers out from Mars on June 16, until the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) engine firing
  • NASA’s MAVEN orbiter
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • MAVEN arrives about 48 hours ahead of MOM on September 21, 2014.
  • rendezvous on September 24, 2014
  • MOM probe
  • will study the atmosphere and sniff for signals of methane.
  • Working together, MOM and MAVEN will revolutionize our understanding of Mars atmosphere, dramatic climatic history and potential for habitability
  • MOM was designed and developed by the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) at a cost of $69 Million and marks India’s maiden foray into interplanetary flight
  • before reaching Mars, mission navigators must keep the craft
  • on course
  • from Earth to Mars through a series of in flight Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TMSs).
  • The second TCM was just successfully performed on June 11 by firing the spacecraft’s 22 Newton thrusters for a duration of 16 seconds
  • TCM-1 was conducted on December 11, 2013 by firing the 22 Newton Thrusters for 40.5 seconds
  • Two additional TCM firings are planned in August and September 2014.
  • the probe has flown about 70% of the way to Mars, traveling about 466 million kilometers out of a total of 680 million kilometers (400 million miles) overall, with about 95 days to go.
  • One way radio signals to Earth take approximately 340 seconds
  • ISRO reports the spacecraft and its five science instruments are healthy. It is being continuously monitored by the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) and NASA JPL’s Deep Space Network (DSN). Remove this ad
  • Although they were developed independently and have different suites of scientific instruments, the MAVEN and MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history, MAVEN’s top scientist
  • MAVEN’s principal Investigator
  • “We have had some discussions with their science team, and there are some overlapping objectives,”
  • “At the point where we [MAVEN and MOM] are both in orbit collecting data we do plan to collaborate and work together with the data jointly,”
Mars Base

India's Mars Orbiter Mission Rising to Red Planet - Glorious Launch Gallery - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...planet-glorious-launch-gallery

scibyte109 SpacecraftUpdate India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) safely
  • injected into
  • initial elliptical Earth parking orbit following Tuesday’s (Nov. 5)
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • launch
  • ISRO engineers successfully completed the first of six orbit raising “Midnight Maneuver” burns at 01:17 hrs IST
  • Nov. 6
  • The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will
  • eventually arrive at the Mars Sphere of Influence after a 10 month interplanetary cruise
  • India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars
  • The launch “placed MOM very precisely into an initial elliptical orbit around Earth
  • ISRO’s engineers devised a
  • procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over the next several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
  • engine fires when
  • is at its closest point in orbit above Earth. This increases the ships velocity and gradually widens the ellipse
  • raises the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
  • expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day
  • voyage
  • arrives in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014
  • , NASA’s
  • MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch
  • on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida
  • Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal
  • study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost
  • MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history
Mars Base

NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...asa-wants-send-your-haiku-mars

scibyte93 MarsHaiku

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • Any Earthling can submit a haiku about Mars by July 1—the DVD will include the name of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will eventually orbit the red planet.
  • NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, it wants to pack onboard a DVD containing three poetic messages
  • Starting July 15, an online public vote will open to select the three top haikus.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • NASA's MAVEN mission will be the first mission devoted to studying the Martian upper atmosphere
  • gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
Mars Base

India's First Mars Probe 'MOM' Blasts Free of Earth Joining MAVEN in Race to Red Planet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ng-maven-in-race-to-red-planet

scibyte111 India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine
  • Dec. 1)
  • to begin her nearly yearlong momentous voyage to the Red Planet.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Indian space engineers initiated the 440 Newton liquid fueled engine firing precisely as planned at 00:49 hrs (IST) on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2013 during a critical nail-biting burn lasting some 22 minutes
  • MOM is nicknamed ‘Mangalyaan’ – which in Hindi means ‘Mars craft
Mars Base

Mars Rover Curiosity Proves Some Earth Meteorites are Martian | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/iosity-martian-meteorites.html

scibyte106

shared by Mars Base on 20 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • New data collected by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pinned down the exact ratio of two forms of the inert gas argon in the Martian atmosphere
  • help confirm the origins of some meteorites
  • could also help researchers understand how and when Mars lost most of its atmosphere
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • By understanding exactly how much of the lighter isotope argon-36 is present in the Martian atmosphere and comparing it to the heavier isotope, argon-38, scientists were able to confirm what the composition of a Martian meteorite on Earth should be
  • Curiosity found that the argon ratio for Mars is 4.2. The lighter form of argon has escaped more readily than the heavier isotope
  • Before this new study, scientists had placed the argon ratio somewhere between 3.6 and 4.5 by analyzing gas trapped inside Martian meteors on Earth
  • Argon is the clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and does not interact
  • Curiosity is unable to directly investigate how much atmosphere Mars is losing, NASA's next Mars mission is designed to do just that
  • The MAVEN spacecraft (the name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) will launch toward the Red Planet in November
Mars Base

Interesting Prospects for Comet A1 Siding Spring Versus the Martian Atmosphere - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-versus-the-martian-atmosphere

scibyte130 CometSidingSpring

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 14 - No Cached
  • This October, a comet will brush
  • giving scientists a chance to study how it possibly interacts with a planetary atmosphere
  • an impact of the comet on the surface of the Red Planet has long been ruled out
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • interesting possibility of possible interactions of the coma of A1 Siding Spring and the tenuous atmosphere of Mars
  • researchers considered how active Comet A1 Siding Spring may be at the time of closest approach on October 19th, 2014
  • Discovered early last year by Robert McNaught from the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia
  • when it was found that it will pass extremely close to Mars later this year.
  • with a nominal passage of 138,000 kilometres from Mars. That’s about one third the distance from Earth to the Moon, and 17 times closer than the nearest recorded passage of a comet to the Earth, Comet D/1770 L1 Lexell in 1780.
  • And although the nucleus will safely pass Mars, the brush with its extended atmosphere might just be detectable by the fleet of spacecraft and rovers in service around Mars
  • NEOWISE and Hubble are already monitoring the comet for enhanced activity
  • The Opportunity rover is also still functioning, and Mars Odyssey and ESA’s Mars Express are still in orbit around the Red Planet and sending back data
  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission and NASA’s MAVEN orbiter arrive just before the comet.
  • MAVEN was designed to study the upper atmosphere of Mars, and carries an ion-neutral mass spectrometer (NGIMS) which could yield information on the interaction of the coma with the Martian upper atmosphere and ionosphere.
  • Proposals for using Earth-based assets for further observations of the comet prior to the event in October are still pending
  • Amateur observers will be able to follow the approach telescopically
  • It’s also interesting to consider the potential for interactions of the coma with the surfaces of the moons of Mars as well, though the net amount of water vapor expected to be deposited will not be large
  • UPDATE: Check out this nifty interactive simulator which includes Comet A1 Siding Springs courtesy of the Solar System Scope
Mars Base

New NASA missions to investigate how Mars turned hostile - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...asa-missions-mars-hostile.html

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 19 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Two new NASA missions
  • will try to discover what transformed Mars
  • There are signs that in the distant past, billions of years ago, Mars was a much more inviting place. Martian terrain is carved with channels that resemble dry riverbeds
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission features Curiosity, the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the Red Planet
  • The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, scheduled to launch in late 2013, will orbit Mars and is devoted to understanding the Red Planet's upper atmosphere
  • help determine what caused the Martian atmosphere—and water— to be lost to space, making the climate increasingly inhospitable for life.
Mars Base

Opportunity rover Spied atop Martian Mountain Ridge from Orbit - Views from Above and B... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...bit-views-from-above-and-below

scibyte121 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 20 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • NASA’s renowned Mars rover Opportunity has been spied
  • y from above and below
  • orbital view above – just released
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The highly detailed image was freshly taken on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day 2014) by the telescopic High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
  • orbital image shows not only rover Opportunity at her location today, but
  • some of the wheel tracks created
  • as she climbed from the plains below up to near the peak of Solander Poin
  • The scene is narrowly focused on a spot barely one-quarter mile (400 meters) wide.
  • Endeavour is an impact scar created billions of years ago.
  • that infamous ‘jelly doughnut’ rock was actually the impetus for this new imaging campaign by NASA’s MRO Martian ‘Spysat.’
  • shiny 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters)
  • , the science team decided to enlist the unparalleled capabilities of the HiRISE camera and imaging team in pursuit of answers.
  • To help solve the mystery
  • ‘Pinnacle Island’ had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a set of before/after pictures taken by Opportunity’s cameras on Jan, 8, 2014 (Sol 3540)
  • exact same spot had been vacant of debris in photos taken barely 4 days earlier.
  • the HiRISE research team was called in to plan a new high resolution observation of the ‘Murray Ridge’ area and gather clues about the rocky riddle
  • The purpose was to “check the remote possibility that a fresh impact by an object from space might have
  • thrown this rock to its new location
  • no fresh crater impacting site was found in the new image
  • the mystery was solved at last by the rover team after Opportunity drove a short distance away from the ‘jelly doughnut’ rock
  • snapped some ‘look back’ photographs to document the ‘mysterious scene’ for further scrutiny.
  • Opportunity unknowingly ‘created’ the mystery herself when she drove over a larger rock, crushing and breaking it apart with the force from the wheels and her hefty 400 pound (185 kg) mass.
  • “Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,”
  • Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson
  • Feb 19, marks Opportunity’s 3582nd Sol or Martian Day roving Mars. She is healthy with plenty of power.
  • snapped over 188,800
  • images
  • Her total odometry stands at over 24.07 miles (38.73 kilometers) since touchdown on Jan. 24, 2004
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Rover Confirms Mars Origin of Some Meteorites - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte106 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 21 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Examination of the Martian atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover confirms that some meteorites that have dropped to Earth really are from the Red Planet
  • A key new measurement of the inert gas argon in Mars' atmosphere by Curiosity's laboratory provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origin of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origin of other meteorites
  • The new measurement is a high-precision count of two forms of argon -- argon-36 and argon-38 -- accomplished by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument inside the rover.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • These lighter and heavier forms, or isotopes, of argon exist naturally throughout the solar system
  • On Mars the ratio of light to heavy argon is skewed because much of that planet's original atmosphere was lost to space
  • The lighter form of argon was taken away more readily because it rises to the top of the atmosphere more easily and requires less energy to escape
  • That left the Martian atmosphere relatively enriched in the heavier isotope, argon-38
  • past analyses by Earth-bound scientists of gas bubbles trapped inside Martian meteorites had already narrowed the Martian argon ratio to between 3.6 and 4.5
  • Measurements by NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s put the Martian atmospheric ratio in the range of four to seven
  • The new SAM direct measurement on Mars now pins down the correct argon ratio at 4.2
  • The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape
  • NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is designed to do so
  • That mission is being prepared
  • for a launch-opportunity period that begins on Nov. 18
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