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NASA launched Monday evening Maven probe dedicated to the study of Mars. It is a ten-month long journey to the Red Planet, which began from one of the shooting at the military base at Cape Canaveral in Florida, under the cover of a powerful Atlas V rocket
new full automatic machine ambitious Mars exploration carried out by the U.S. space agency, the most famous representative is the big 6 wheel robot Curiosity program. While all previous U.S. missions looking past the surface conditions with traces could encourage the emergence of life, Maven (for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) will stay in orbit around the red planet to solve the mystery of his lost atmosphere.
For once, Mars was covered with a dense and thick atmosphere that allowed large amounts of water to flow to the surface. With this, there is 4 billion years, shortly after the formation of the solar system, the planet knew conducive to life weather conditions, which have recently demonstrated the results of U.S. and European missions. Today, much of the atmosphere and water it contained disappeared, condemning the planet to being a vast desert sculpted by the winds. The current atmospheric pressure became too low for water to exist in liquid form on the surface, although significant amounts remain at the poles as jelly. By measuring the solar wind and its interaction with molecules in the upper atmosphere of Mars, Maven will know the current exhaust this rate. So to reconstruct the evolution of the phenomenon in the past.
Several hypotheses have already invoked to explain the escape of the atmosphere. One of them involves the massive bombardment of meteorites during a period dominated the youth of the solar system, during which the planets were struck continuously by numerous asteroids. The space has come to be “cleaned” of all these wandering rocks there are 3.8 billion years, but in the meantime, the incessant impacts on the surface of the red planet could have ejected into space part important of its atmosphere. March, smaller and much lighter than the Earth, in fact has a much lower attraction, which makes the gas ejection in much easier than on our planet space.
The prevailing theory is that Mars has lost its internal magnetic field protects the atmosphere
But even if the bombing may have played a role in the beginning, it does not explain how the phenomenon could continue thereafter. “The prevailing theory is that Mars has lost its internal magnetic field protects the atmosphere against the direct impact of the solar wind,” says Joseph Grebowsky, the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA. The magnetic field acts as a shield that deflects the stream of charged particles emitted continuously our star. But the internal dynamo generates the shield in the heart of the red planet stopped there about 3.7 billion years.
an instrument of Maven, which will be used to measure the current state of the solar wind around Mars, has been developed in France. The solar wind electron analyzer (SWEA) has been designed and produced by the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, with financial support from CNES.
Maven task was almost a victim of shutdown, which has forced unemployed part of the U.S. federal government in October. Stopping the preparations for the launch, NASA would have missed the window of current launch, which would have extended the mission in 2016. But Charles Bolden, head of NASA, pleaded to Congress that the mission was “vital” to U.S. interests, and managing to obtain a waiver and continue the work. The vital aspect invoked was not the scientific mission of Maven, but its role as a link in orbit continue to transmit data from the core mission Curiosity. Maven is considered a “small” mission with NASA, with a budget of “only” $ 671 million.
responsible for the first Indian mission to Mars must have had cold sweats Monday, November 11 when one of the operations to trace the orbit of the probe did not go as planned, leaving the machine at a lower altitude than expected. Everything is finally back to normal, with two additional updates fire the main engine that propelled Sunday to 1.9 million km from Earth.
On November 5, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been used for this mission that the small home launcher, the PSLV, which forces him to make a delivery in stages to transfer orbit that will bring Mangalyaan probe to its final destination. The last operation that finally send to Mars is scheduled for December 1.
Indian mission, the first of its kind in Asia, has the ambition to measure the methane on Mars, which could indicate a possible biological activity. The budget is extremely tight, is only 55 million euros.
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