Continuing investigations into Mars’ ability to support life, NASA, in conjunction with U. California-Berkeley scientists, has initiated the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission to research the planet’s depleted atmosphere.
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory and U. Colorado-Boulder finalized plans this month for the $485 million project, also known as MAVEN, expecting to launch an unmanned spacecraft into a one-year orbit around the red planet in late 2013.
Rather than attempting to address the study’s possible implications for Earth’s atmosphere, the MAVEN team hopes to follow in the footsteps of the 1970s Viking launches or the recent Mars Global Surveyor mission, which sought to find water on Mars.
“The reason we are exploring Mars is not to understand the Earth, but to understand Mars and answer some philosophical questions about the viability of life,” said MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky. “This study goes hand-in-hand with missions looking for water on Mars.”
If all goes according to plan, the MAVEN spacecraft should arrive with “perfect timing” in Mars’ orbit during the end of an irregular 13-year cycle – two years longer than a normal cycle – of solar activity, according to senior fellow of the Space Sciences Lab Janet Luhmann, who worked on the project. The end of this cycle heralds events such as sunspots and coronal mass ejections, which create ideal conditions for the study, Luhmann said.
Jakosky said the incredibly complex and ambitious project follows a strict schedule that must be followed in order to complete the mission. If the team fails to launch the spacecraft before the end of the solar cycle, the entire project will be set back nearly 26 months.
“The success of a mission like this depends on the hard work of a lot of different people and departments,” Jakosky said. “We are incorporating 50 years of successes and failures into this project.”
In keeping with the cooperative spirit of the project, each of the three major laboratories involved has contributed extensively to the eight-piece array of data collection equipment.
UC Berkeley researchers have primarily been responsible for the development of a series of detection devices meant to measure the number of energetic particles emitted from the sun entering Mars’ atmosphere.
MAVEN researchers hope to break new ground by determining whether solar flares erased Mars’ atmosphere or, as a competing hypothesis postulates, atmospheric gases disappeared underneath Mars’ crust, according to David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager and fellow at the Space Sciences Lab.
In addition to the value of purely scientific data that the MAVEN study might yield, Mitchell said the exploration of conditions on Mars might help broach philosophical questions regarding the potential of life beyond Earth.
“If we do find life on Mars, that would be the discovery of the century,” he said. “Our understanding of how life emerges is part of the whole ‘Why are we here?’ question.”