MAVEN arrives around Mars to study upper atmosphere

 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A NASA spacecraft designed to investigate the properties and history of the upper atmosphere of Mars successfully arrived in orbit around the Red Planet on Sunday.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, will begin a one Earth year science mission to learn why the planet has lost much of it's atmosphere over the past few billion years. Controllers will perform six maneuvers over the next six weeks to lower it's elliptical orbit of one revolution every 35 hours down to four-and-one-half hours.

"The MAVEN science mission focuses on answering questions about where did the water that was present on early Mars go, about where did the carbon dioxide go,” MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky stated on Friday. “These are important questions for understanding the history of Mars, its climate and its potential to support at least microbial life.”

Soaring across space at over 8,200 m.p.h., MAVEN turned to face it's six small engines in the direction of travel and begin a 33 minute burn at 9:50 p.m. EDT on Sunday. The burn slowed down the spacecraft sending it into the beginning of a planned orbit 235 miles over the north pole.

As the first signals took over 12 minutes later to reach Earth that the craft had safely arrived in Martian orbit, cheers and applause by project scientists broke the crisp silence of the the mission control facility at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.

"MAVEN will begin a six week commissioning phase that includes maneuvering the spacecraft into it's final orbit and testing it's instruments and science mapping commands," NASA spokesperson Dwayne Brown explained on Friday.

MAVEN's science orbit is planned with a low point of 90 miles to allow the craft to fly through the planet's upper atmosphere, and a high point of 3,900 miles to collect data on the entire planet's atmosphere.

“MAVEN is another NASA robotic scientific explorer that is paving the way for our journey to Mars,” stated Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “Together, robotics and humans will pioneer the Red Planet and the solar system to help answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions about life beyond Earth.”

Among the observatory's three main science instruments is the University of California at Berkley's Solar Wind Ion Analyzer or SWIA. NASA explains that SWIA will study the ion particles across the planet's atmosphere to discover why Mars "has gradually lost much of it's atmosphere" to become "a frozen, barren planet".

"We want to know where the atmosphere, especially water, went, how it left and what Mars has looked like over its entire history,” SWIA instrument lead Jasper Halekas of Berkley's Space Sciences Laboratory said. SWIA will measure the solar wind speed and density.

The Lockheed Martin-built MAVEN was launched from Cape Canaveral AFS atop an Atlas V rocket last November, beginning a ten month interplanetary voyage covering 442 million miles.


(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace, science and technology. Follow his updates via Twitter @AbsolutSpaceGuy.)

Atlas 5 launches U.S. government's secret CLIO satellite

An Atlas 5 lifts-off from Cape Canaveral AFS on September 16. (ULA)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A secret U.S. government spacecraft known as CLIO was successfully launched from America's Space Coast Tuesday to begin a multi-year mission based on global security in earth orbit.

As lightning and rain showers closed in on the launch pad, controllers with United Launch Alliance elected to delay the lift-off. Reports of lightning strikes four miles from the fully fueled rocket and thick clouds overhead forced launch control to extend the delay as they checked launch pad electronics.

As the two and one-half hour launch window neared the end, controllers saw the weather turn favorable and restarted the countdown during the window's final minute.

The forty-ninth Atlas V mission began at 8:10 p.m. EDT, as it thundered into Florida's cloudy night sky on a southeastward trajectory out over the Atlantic waters. Ninety seconds later, the white and bronze rocket was moving faster than the speed of sound powered by the core first stage's RD-180 engine.

The first stage fell away following engine shutdown four minutes into it's launch profile. The rocket's centaur engine's first of two burns began immediately propelling the spacecraft higher towards it's intended orbit.

"It is an honor to work with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company and all of our mission partners to launch this very important satellite,” ULA vice president Jim Sponnick stated on Tuesday evening. “The teams seamlessly integrated to ensure accurate delivery of the CLIO mission to orbit.”

CLIO, a golden modular satellite featuring twin solar panels, deployed from the Atlas' centaur upper stage nearly three hours after launch high above the eastern Indian Ocean. The spacecraft's successful 11:01 p.m. separation will be followed over the next few weeks by maneuvering CLIO to it's home in geostationary orbit.

The Lockheed Martin-built CLIO craft is expected to advance "global security" according the company's recent press release. "We're proud to support the CLIO system and looking forward to the launch," said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president with Lockheed's Space Systems.

The ULA company's next launch is an Atlas V on October 29, poised to deliver a Global Positioning System satellite for military and civilian use.

(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace, science and technology. Follow his updates via Twitter @AbsolutSpaceGuy.)

U.S.-Russian space flight lands safely in Kazakhstan

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An American and two Russians returned to Earth on Thursday completing their 167 day stay aboard the International Space Station with a pinpoint landing on the desert region of central Kazakhstan.

NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsuv and Oleg Artemyev guided their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft to a touchdown at 10:23 p.m. EDT (8:23 a.m. Thursday, local time) on Wednesday.

The smooth landing concluded a spaceflight which began with a Soyuz thruster failure minutes after arriving in orbit forcing the crew to limp into a higher orbit over a two day period which trailed the space station.

Out going station commander Swanson, Skvortsuv and Artemyev said their farewells to fellow crew mates American Reid Wiseman, German Alexander Gerst and Expedition 41 commander Russian Max Suraev before entering their Soyuz and closing the hatches a few hours prior to undocking.

As an orbital sun rise began, the Soyuz craft separated from the station's Poisk module at 7:01 p.m., and slowly began moving out to a distance of a few hundred feet before circling around the station and departing.

"Goodbye ISS and so long station," radioed Soyuz commander Skvortsuv to his former home in space five minutes following the undocking.

Two Earth orbits later, Skvortsuv then maneuvered the Soyuz to a proper attitude to allow a section of the Soyuz to separate prior to leaving orbit with an engine firing at 9:31 p.m.

The crew made 2,704 trips around the Earth and traveled 71.7 million miles since their launch in March.

A new space trio is scheduled to launch to the orbiting laboratory in two weeks. NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore and cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova will lift-off inside their TMA-14M from Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 25 at 4:25 p.m., and will arrive at the station five and one-half hours later for docking.

Serova will become only the fourth Russian female to travel into space and the first to spend a long duration stay aboard the space station.


(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace, science and technology. Follow his updates via Twitter @AbsolutSpaceGuy.)

Asteroid 2014RC to speed past Earth Sunday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A newly discovered asteroid the size of a house will pass close to earth on Sunday bringing the space rock to within 25,000 miles above New Zealand during it's closest approach. NASA confirmed on Wednesday that Asteroid 2014RC will "safely pass" by our planet.

Astronomers discovered the asteroid during an astronomical scan of the evening skies from Tucson, Arizona on August 31 and quickly reported their findings to lead astronomers at Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts.

The fast moving space rock is scheduled to pass over the southern Pacific Ocean at 2:18 p.m. EDT (18:18 GMT) on September 7, less than 3,000 miles from earth's ring of communications and weather satellites located in geostationary orbit.

"While this celestial object does not appear to pose any threat to Earth or satellites, its close approach creates a unique opportunity for researchers to observe and learn more about asteroids," stated NASA spokesperson DC Agle on Tuesday from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Backyard stargazers may have an opportunity to view 2014 RC this weekend using a telescope with a good magnification. However, the Earth's moon will be nearly full proving light pollution for the approaching celestial object.

Atlanta's Tellus Science Museum's chief astronomer David Dundee said that the asteroid's small size "is way too faint to observe at magnitude 15.26. That’s about 4000 times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye, and at best it might be a speck when photographed".

Dundee adds, "This object is about the same size as the object that hit over Russia about a year ago. With improved technology these near miss asteroids are becoming almost an everyday discovery."


(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace, science and technology. Follow his updates via Twitter @AbsolutSpaceGuy.)