Selfie marks four years in orbit around Mars

Today, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft (MAVEN) is celebrating four years in orbit and studying the red planet's upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and the solar wind. To mark the occasion, the MAVEN team released a selfie image of the spacecraft on Mars.

"MAVEN has been a huge success," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator of the MAVEN mission and professor at CU Boulder's Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). "The spacecraft and instruments continue to function as planned and we look forward to further exploring the high Martian atmosphere and its influence on the climate."

The MAVEN selfie was made by observing the ultraviolet wavelengths of sunlight reflected by the components of the spacecraft. The image was obtained using the ultraviolet spectrograph instrument (IUVS), which was built at LASP and normally examines the ultraviolet radiation emissions of the upper Martian atmosphere.

The IUVS instrument is mounted on a platform at the end of a 1.2 meter boom (its own "selfie stick"), and while spinning, the boom can watch the spaceship. The selfie was made from 21 different images, obtained with the IUVS in different orientations, which were assembled.

"We never expected MAVEN to be able to take its own image that way, but MAVEN has already surprised us several times with its outstanding performance on Mars," said LASP professor and senior scientist Nick Schneider. IUVS instrument. "We think it's the first ultraviolet selfie taken by a spaceship."

The LASP MAVEN team brings together researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. MAVEN has been retransmitting data to Earth since the spacecraft entered orbit around Mars on September 14, 2014. The LASP provided two instruments for MAVEN and directs the scientific operations as well as mission education and outreach .

During its visit to Mars, MAVEN made the following discoveries and scientific results:

• Irrefutable evidence that the loss of atmosphere in space has been a major factor in climate change on Mars.
• Determined that the stripping of ions from the upper atmosphere to space during a solar storm can be multiplied by 10 or more, which could make these storms a major factor of atmospheric loss over time.
• Discovery of two new types of Martian aurora: diffuse auroras and proton auroras. Neither type has a direct connection to the local or global magnetic field, nor to the magnetic spikes, as auroras do on Earth.
• Made direct observations of a layer of metal ions in the Martian ionosphere, the first direct detection of such a layer on a planet other than the Earth. Ions are produced by a constant influx of incoming interplanetary dust.
• Demonstrated that most of the carbon dioxide on Mars has been lost in space and that there is not enough left to terraform the planet by warming it up, even though carbon dioxide could be released and reintroduced into l & # 39; atmosphere.

Next year, engineers will launch an aerobatic maneuver by flying over the spacecraft in the upper atmosphere of Mars to slow it down. This will reduce the highest altitude in MAVEN's orbit to improve its ability to serve as a communication relay for data from rovers on the surface. Currently, MAVEN performs about a relay stint per week with one of the rovers. This number will increase after NASA's InSight mission landed on Mars in November.

MAVEN completed its main mission in November 2015 and has been operating as part of an extended mission ever since, continuing its productive inquiry into the upper atmosphere of Mars and exploring the additional scientific opportunities that will bring the new relay orbit. .

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