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Recently, NASA temporarily lost contact with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars for over a decade.

What is the MAVEN Mission?

The MAVEN mission is the first dedicated spacecraft designed specifically to study the upper atmosphere of Mars and its interaction with the Sun. It is a key part of NASA’s long-term Mars Exploration Program, which seeks to understand the planet’s climate history and assess whether Mars could have supported life in the past. 

Objectives of the MAVEN Mission:

• The primary objective of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission is to understand how and why Mars lost a large portion of its atmosphere over billions of years, which fundamentally altered the planet’s climate. 

• The mission aims to identify and quantify atmospheric escape processes, including the role of the Sun’s radiation and solar wind in stripping gases from the Martian upper atmosphere. 

• MAVEN seeks to explain the transition of Mars from an early warm and wet planet, capable of supporting liquid water on its surface, to the present-day cold and arid world. 

• It studies the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’s atmosphere, especially in the absence of a strong global magnetic field, to assess long-term atmospheric vulnerability.
• The mission helps reconstruct the climate history of Mars, providing insights into whether the planet could have supported life in the past. 

• MAVEN’s findings also contribute to comparative planetary science, improving understanding of atmospheric evolution on Earth-like planets within and beyond the solar system. 

Launch and Orbit Details

MAVEN was launched in November 2013 and reached Mars in September 2014. It follows an elliptical orbit, completing one revolution around Mars roughly every 3.5 hours, and approaches as close as 150 km above the Martian surface, allowing it to directly sample the upper atmosphere. 

Scientific instruments on board:

MAVEN carries three main instrument packages that work together to study atmospheric loss:

• One set of instruments examines the solar wind and its interaction with Mars’s ionosphere, which is especially important because Mars lacks a strong global magnetic field, leaving its atmosphere vulnerable to being stripped away by charged solar particles.
• A second instrument, an ultraviolet spectrometer, observes the structure and composition of the upper atmosphere by analysing ultraviolet light.
• The third is a mass spectrometer, which directly measures the chemical composition of atmospheric gases. 

Significance of MAVEN Mission:

• The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has significantly advanced understanding of planetary atmospheres, particularly how they evolve and respond to external forces over geological time.
• It has provided direct evidence on solar–planet interactions, demonstrating how solar wind and radiation can strip away atmospheric gases, especially on planets lacking a strong magnetic field.
• MAVEN’s observations have helped explain Mars’s climatic transformation from a warm, water-rich planet to the cold and dry world observed today.
• The mission has strengthened knowledge of atmospheric escape mechanisms, which are critical for assessing long-term planetary habitability.
• MAVEN’s findings offer a valuable framework for comparative planetary science, enabling scientists to study and compare atmospheric loss processes on Mars, Earth, and other rocky planets.
• Insights from MAVEN also inform the search for Earth-like exoplanets, by helping scientists evaluate which distant worlds are more likely to retain atmospheres capable of supporting life. 

Conclusion:

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has been crucial in revealing how atmospheric loss shaped Mars’s climate and habitability, while also providing broader insights into planetary evolution and the conditions required for sustaining atmospheres on Earth-like worlds across the universe.

Source: News on Air