MAVEN: Status update, October 15, 2014

Commissioning activities have gone extremely well over the few weeks since MAVEN entered Mars orbit on September 21. Since then, we have successfully completed four engine burns to lower MAVEN’s orbit. MAVEN now orbits Mars every 4.6 hours with a periapsis (closest distance from the Mars surface) of 175 kilometers. All instruments are activated, and we are seeing data that represents exciting first science from the Mars upper atmosphere. On Oct. 14, 2014, the science team held a conference call with the media to discuss early results. Over the past week we successfully completed five deployments of MAVEN instrument systems needed for six of the eight… [More at link]