The Maven Spacecraft, launched toward Mars in November 2013, is nearing the Red Planet and will enter orbit around that world on Sept. 21.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) vehicle has spent 10 months traveling to the most Earth-like of all planets in our solar system. When the robotic craft comes within range, six retro-engines will fire, slowing the speeding observatory by 2,758 mph.
This change will allow the gravity of Mars to take hold of Maven, placing it in an elliptical orbit around the planet. This maneuver will require the spacecraft to turn around, so that the main engines are pointed away from Earth. This will also mean the main high-gain antenna, used to communicate with Earth, will be pointed away from our home planet. A limited amount of data will still be sent by the spacecraft to mission planners, through the use of a smaller, low-gain antenna aboard the spacecraft.
At first, the orbit will take the vehicle around Mars once every 35 hours. After several weeks, the craft will come ever-closer to the Red Planet, reducing orbital times to just four-and-a-half hours each.
The Maven spacecraft was designed to study how Mars evolved from a warm, wet planet, long ago, to the cold, dry world we see today. This mystery has long-puzzled astronomers.
"We're the first mission devoted to observing the upper atmosphere of Mars and how it interacts with the sun and the solar wind," Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado and principal investigator for the Maven mission, said.
Researchers on the project hope the spacecraft will reveal how much gas is escaping to space from the upper atmosphere of Mars, and what processes may be driving the action. The final elliptical orbit will bring the vehicle within 90 miles of the planet surface, to sample the upper atmosphere, before traveling out as far as 3,900 miles from Mars.
Instruments aboard the craft, including the Particles and Fields Package, Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, and the Remote Sensing Package, were all calibrated by mission managers during the flight to the Red Planet. The Particles and Fields Package was also used to examine the solar wind that emanates from the sun.
"Every day at Mars is gold. The early checks of instrument and spacecraft systems during cruise phase enable us to move into the science collection phase shortly after Maven arrives at Mars," David Mitchell, project manager for Maven at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, stated in a press release.
A video describing the flight and mission of Maven is available on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
