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Here is a nice twist on the selfie Mars-explorer.
We usually see photos that robots such as NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers are on the surface of the red planet. But the agency has just released a shot that the spacecraft MAVEN took himself into orbit Martian.
The new image is a composite of 21 photos taken in ultraviolet light by the MAVEN Imaging UV Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument, located at the end of a 1.2 meter long dam. The IUVS generally monitors emissions from the upper atmosphere of Mars, but the MAVEN team turned the instrument for the selfie. [The Top 10 Space Robot Selfies Ever]
NASA officials released the image September 21 – the fourth anniversary of the arrival of the spacecraft on Mars to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet and its interaction with the solar wind, the flow of charged particles continually from the sun.
MAVEN – whose name is an abbreviation for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution" – has accomplished a great deal during these four years. For example, observations of the spacecraft show that atmospheric stripping by the solar wind has played a key role in the passage of the red planet from a relatively hot and humid world to the cold, dry place where it is currently located. .
This transition was probably more or less complete by about 3.7 billion years, said the MAVEN team members.
MAVEN data further indicate that strong solar storms swayed this background atmospheric stripping by accelerating the loss of air molecules in the space by a factor of 10 or more.
The mission, which was launched in November 2013, also discovered two new types of auroras on Mars, different from celestial light shows on Earth. MAVEN data suggest that the red planet has lost so much carbon dioxide in space that humans could no longer terraform Mars by releasing CO.2 trapped in rocks and polar ice caps in the atmosphere. [Photos: NASA’s MAVEN Mission to Mars]
"MAVEN has been hugely successful," Bruce Jakosky, a senior fellow at the University of Colorado at the University of Colorado, said in a statement. "The spacecraft and instruments continue to function as expected, and we look forward to further exploring the high Martian atmosphere and its influence on the climate."
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us, Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com.
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