[X] My Assistant

[Marslauncher]

Not sure if this has been touched on before, I did not see a place for the MAVEN mission on the Past or Future missions subsection.

1)Will MAVEN have the ability to relay communication from the surface vehicles to Earth?
2)Am I correct in reading there are no visual cameras on MAVEN?


Fair Use.

http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/scienc...rument-package/

The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California, Berkeley/Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) with support from the University of Colorado Boulder/Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet:

•Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA)
•Solar Wind Ion Analyzer (SWIA)
•Suprathermal and Thermal Ion Composition (STATIC)
•Solar Energetic Particle (SEP)
•Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW)
•Magnetometer (MAG)
The Remote Sensing Package, built by LASP, will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere via remote sensing.

•Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrometer (IUVS)
The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS), provided by GFSC, will measure the composition and isotopes of neutral ions.



Apologies in advance if this has already been answered. (btw I think we do need a MAVEN sticky in future missions)

John (Mars)

[kwan3217]

About the angled panels: As a previous poster said, the panels are angled so that the craft is stable when flying through the atmosphere. What no one has noted is why it needs to be stable. Maven is NOT going to aerobrake. It goes initially into a 35-hour highly elliptical orbit, but after a couple of days it performs another powered maneuver to lower the period from 35 hours to 4.5 hours, all in one burn.

The spacecraft performs periodic deep dips, to allow the instruments on board to touch, smell, and taste the atmosphere. It dips in to the upper atmosphere, as low as the scientists could convince the engineers to go, stays low for a couple of (4.5 hour) orbits, then raises periapse back out of the atmosphere. It does this several times (5 times planned for the prime 1-earth-year mission) because the orbit precesses such that the periapse latitude changes, and therefore the spacecraft can deep-dip at a variety of latitudes.

So, the panels are angled to be stable, and it needs to be stable not for aerobraking but for deep dips.

Also, the science orbit is not optimal for relay, and the relay orbit is not optimal for science. At some point, the plan is to maneuver from an orbit more friendly to science to an orbit more friendly to relay, for sure after the 1-earth-year prime mission is complete, but as late as the scientists can convince the project managers. The relay equipment on Mars Odyssey and Mars Recon Orbiter both still work fine, but they won't last forever. Maven is a backup/replacement for those.

I have never heard about a plan for a terminal deep-dip, and from what I can tell, the scientists would prefer a longer mission to going out in a blaze of glory, even if relay were not an issue.

[MahFL]

MAVEN was always going to serve as a relay, and it's orbit was going to be changed to enable that.