[Via Satellite 09-22-2014] Following a 10-month interplanetary journey, NASA<\/b>\u2019s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) research satellite has reached the Red Planet. Lockheed Martin<\/b>, MAVEN\u2019s manufacturer, and NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed the orbital insertion, with telemetry and tracking data coming from NASA\u2019s Canberra, Australia-based Deep Space Network antenna station. The spacecraft now begins a six-week commissioning phase that includes testing science instruments, mapping commands and moving into final orbit.<\/p>\n
The University of California <\/b>at Berkeley, the University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics <\/b>(CU\/LASP) and NASA Goddard built MAVEN\u2019s three primary instruments. During the one Earth-year science mission, MAVEN will conduct five \u201cdeep dip\u201d campaigns, immersing itself in Mars\u2019 upper atmosphere to study composition, the escape of gases and the influence of solar activity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the first orbiter dedicated to studying Mars\u2019 upper atmosphere, MAVEN will greatly improve our understanding of the history of the Martian atmosphere, how the climate has changed over time, and how that has influenced the evolution of the surface and the potential habitability of the planet,\u201d said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. \u201cIt also will better inform a future mission to send humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 09-22-2014] Following a 10-month interplanetary journey, NASA\u2019s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) research satellite has reached the Red Planet. Lockheed Martin, MAVEN\u2019s manufacturer, and NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed the orbital insertion, with telemetry and tracking data coming from NASA\u2019s Canberra, Australia-based Deep Space Network antenna station. The spacecraft now begins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}