MAVEN: Insertion Orbit
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) spacecraft was launched on a 10 month journey to Mars on November 18, 2013. MAVEN is expected to arrive in Mars orbit on Sept 21, 2014 EDT. MAVEN's mission is to investigate the upper atmosphere of Mars and its interactions with the Sun and solar wind. This will help scientists understand why Mars lost many volatile molecules form its atmosphere such as CO2, N2, and H2O.
This visualization shows MAVEN's approach and orbit insertion around Mars. MAVEN's initial orbit is highly elliptical. The tail behind MAVEN changes to red to indicate the period during which thrusters are fired for orbit insertion. A separate visualization shows the transition from the insertion orbit to the more circular science orbit.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
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Scientists
- Bruce Jakosky (LASP)
- David Folta (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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DE421 (JPL DE421)
ID: 752Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See all pages that use this dataset -
GSFC Flight Dynamics Facility Ephemeris
ID: 812
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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