Tag Archives: atmosphere

MAVEN: 3rd deep-dip campaign successful

To complete the third deep-dip of the mission, the MAVEN spacecraft executed a maneuver with a ∆V (change in velocity) of 3.9 m/sec. The final “walk out” maneuver resulted in a periapsis of 145 km above the surface of Mars, … Continue reading

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MAVEN: ‘Walk-out’ from deep-dip #3

After a very successful third deep-dip into the well-mixed portion of Mars’ atmosphere, the MAVEN spacecraft will be commanded to “walk-out” of the current atmospheric density corridor on its way to resuming normal science operations. Raising the periapsis from ~120 … Continue reading

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MARCI weather report, July 6–12, 2015

There was an uptick of dust activity in the southern highlands this past week. Dust lifting in Sirenum, Aonia, and Noachis made for dusty conditions poleward of ~55°S. To the north, transient dust storms and water-ice clouds continued to propagate … Continue reading

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MAVEN: On track in deep-dip maneuver #3

Analysis by the MAVEN navigation team shows that the spacecraft is still within the targeted atmospheric deep-dip corridor. As a result, no maneuver has been made to adjust the location of the spacecraft within the corridor since the beginning of … Continue reading

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MAVEN begins third deep-dip campaign

The MAVEN spacecraft has successfully begun its third deep-dip campaign of the mission. On Tuesday, July 7th, the ‪‎MAVEN‬ navigation team executed a maneuver to lower periapsis by 24 km down to 123 km above the surface of ‪Mars‬. At … Continue reading

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MARCI weather report, June 29–July 5, 2015

This past week, dust storms and water-ice clouds continued to be observed over the northern plains of Mars along the seasonal receding polar cap edge. Looking to the south hemisphere, small, transient dust storms occurred in the highland region, while … Continue reading

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MARCI weather report, June 22–28, 2015

For the past week on Mars, dust lifting and condensate water-ice clouds were observed along the seasonal north polar ice cap edge. A large transient dust storm was noted over Utopia at the beginning of the week. In the southern … Continue reading

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HiRISE: Cloudy skies over Hypanis Valles

This observation shows a candidate 2018 European Space Agency ExoMars landing site in Hypanis Valles. Instead of imaging ancient fluvial deposits (thought to be the remnants of a delta feed lake), the image shows patchy concentrations of dust clouds. These … Continue reading

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MAVEN finds Mars behaving like a rock star

If planets had personalities, Mars would be a rock star according to recent preliminary results from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. Mars sports a “Mohawk” of escaping atmospheric particles at its poles, “wears” a layer of metal particles high in its atmosphere, … Continue reading

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MARCI weather report, June 1–7, 2015

Martian weather for the past week displayed continued dust-lifting and water-ice clouds along the seasonal north polar ice cap edge. In other parts of the northern hemisphere, small short-lived dust storms occurred in Chryse and western Amazonis. Focusing on the … Continue reading

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