NASA's New MAVEN Bound for Mars - East Idaho News
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NASA’s New MAVEN Bound for Mars

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111813 NASAMavenLaunch?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1384797086734NASA(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Mars is becoming a hot travel destination this month.  Less than two weeks after India’s space agency, ISRO, launched a spacecraft to the red planet, NASA has launched one of its own.

Maven, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, launched at 1:28 p.m. ET Monday from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Maven will hover around the upper layers of Mars’ atmosphere.  While it won’t be joining the Curiosity Rover for joyrides on the Martian surface, it will help out the rover in one of its research objectives: analyzing how Mars’ atmosphere has changed in billions of years.

“We want to better understand how the atmosphere is escaping from Mars,” Paul Mahaffy, a NASA research scientist involved with both Maven and Curiosity, said.  “Then, we can extrapolate back in time and ask, ‘Was Mars’ climate substantially different than it is today?'”

But even though Maven is airborne while Curiosity treads along the ground, the two might be able to talk with one another.

“Every time we send an orbiter, we put in telecommunications capability,” Mahaffy said.  “It can talk to the surface rover, whether we need it to or not.”

Following its launch on Monday, Maven will start orbiting Mars Sept. 22, 2014.  The spacecraft’s orbit itself isn’t circular but elliptical.  Maven will be more than 3,700 miles away at its farthest point from Mars’ surface, and 93 miles at its closest point.  But Maven will also briefly dip down to 77 miles to the surface before returning to its orbit.

There are three orbiters hanging around Mars, NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as the European Space Agency’s Mars Express.

With the ISRO’s Mars Orbiter en route, Maven will have plenty of company. “With good fortune,” Mahaffy said, “both spacecraft will be there next year.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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