14 DAY TRIAL // NASA scientists say that last week would have been a very good time to be orbiting the Red Planet with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft.
The new mission, which is scheduled to launch this month, is designed to study the Martian atmosphere and the trace gases it contains, as well as the ways in which the atmosphere interacts with our Sun.
According to solar scientists, last week was a perfect time to do this, since the Sun released a number of coronal mass ejections (CME) into space. Over time, these CME combined to form a massive wave of charged particles, which slammed into the Martian atmosphere. The interplays that occurred are exactly the type of data MAVEN scientists want to gather.
Once the spacecraft is launched, it will keep an eye out on the Sun as it studies Mars. Every time CME are produced, the instruments on the probe will turn to analyzing how the charged solar particles carve away whatever flimsy atmosphere our neighboring world has left.
“I am so disappointed! It's like standing in line to get into a football game when you hear the crowd cheer for a touchdown.” MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said of the team missing out on last week's solar activity. Jakosky is a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder (UCB).
CME are basically pieces of the solar corona consisting of charged hydrogen gas, in the form of protons and electrons. As they travel away from the Sun – at speeds reaching 1,000 kilometers per second (600 miles/s) – they can create a compression wave that can develop into an interplanetary shock wave.
When this shock wave hits planets that are not protected by a strong magnetic field (such as Earth's), it interacts with whatever particles make up the celestial body's atmosphere. Since Mars is not magnetically-protected, the charged solar particles simply strip its atmosphere away.
Astronomers hypothesize that this phenomenon is what brought the Martian atmosphere to its current state, with most of the gases needed to support life having been depleted or stripped away over time. This may have occurred when the planet's core stopped spinning and producing a magnetic field.
The MAVEN mission is currently scheduled to launch on November 18, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. It will achieve orbital insertion around the Red Planet around September 22, 2014.