A Centaur pressure reading went red.

It's ok now though, so all green.

Now at a short built-in hold at T-4 minutes.

Liftoff!

Off the hold.

T-60 seconds.

Liftoff! Go MAVEN!

Through the sound barrier and through Max-Q. 'All rates look good'.

A perfect launch by the sounds of it. Congrats all.

Spacecraft separation. Mars, here we come!

And now we wait...

Not really ... they will communicate (nice DSN visualisation )
And other activities will also happen:
- Two to three weeks after launch, most of MAVEN’s instruments will power up for the first time and perform a post-launch checkout.
- The 6 instruments in MAVEN's Particles and Fields (P&F) Package will remain powered on and will collect data during the cruise to Mars.
- During the MAVEN cruise phase, flight operators will execute at least four trajectory correction maneuvers (TCMs).

Also they plan to observe comet ISON, if ISON survives it's trip around the back of the Sun.

some info on the ISON observations https://dnnpro.outer.jhuapl.edu/Portals/32/...n2_crismani.pdf

Two instruments have been turned on and checked out: NGIMS and IUVS.

https://www.facebook.com/MAVEN2Mars

in case anyone is interested, I recently asked to the MAVEN twitter account whether they went ahead with the planned observations of comet ISON or not and this was the answer:

So MAVEN has already done a couple of Trajectory Correction Maneuvers without any problems. The last, TCM-2, was on February 27. TCM-3 is currently scheduled for September. The MAVEN team is also keeping busy with instrument tests; cruise is only 10 months, so apparently it's actually a pretty busy time.

Anyway, question: at what point would MAVEN get its own subforum under "Orbiters"? After it has successfully achieved Mars orbit and started its nominal mission?


Doug M.

I was going to ask it too... same for MOM

Yes, I was also wondering today about India's MOM. It had a successful trajectory correction on June 11, and is due to make another this coming Sunday 14 Sept.

The plan is for Mars orbit insertion on September 24, two days after Maven.

India MOM Updates

MOM mission overview

Guys, here she comes.
Fingers crossed.

Once ub orbit, then orbital position will need adjusting over a month or so. I'm sure soon enough we'll start getting some data in after that objective is complete.

What factors lead the team to opt for a series of engine burns to lower the 35 hour capture orbit to the 4.5 hour science orbit instead of the now "standard" aerobraking?

I've tried searching the forum and Google for an answer and can't find one.

If you don't need to use aerobraking....why bother. It takes time, has its own risks, and incurs operational costs. It was an enabling technique for MGS, MODY and MRO. MAVEN can get to the orbit it needs to without aerobraking. It's not like carrying extra propellant cost them anything, they used the lightest launch vehicle available.

There will be quite a bit of aerobraking during the science mission itself, though. That's the whole point of the unique solar panel shape, so as to fly through the atmosphere lower than any other orbiter has gotten.

Also... it's a mistake to think of something as standard if the people involved have never done it before. One reason for other nations to fly these kinds of missions (lunar orbiters, landers, Mars orbiters) is to develop those skills themselves. Until they have done it, it is anything but standard.

Phil

Not really.

MAVEN will go lower than other orbiters have in routine science ops - but not as low as other missions have during aerobraking passes. MRO was routinely doing passes of 97-105km during aerobraking ( http://issfd.org/ISSFD_2007/3-3.pdf ) - Odyssey went as low as 95km.

The MAVEN deep deep campaigns only go as low as 125km. The impact on its apoapsis will be pretty negligible..

MRO and MGS oriented their solar arrays to have aerodynamic stability during their aerobraking, Odyssey parked it's solar arrays 'behind' the spacecraft bus to have a similar stability. MAVEN doesn't articulate its arrays - so the inherent stability had to be designed in - hence the solar panel configuration.

Thanks Doug; that explains it well.
So Odyssey is the record holder unless we exclude MCO, (and I don't think anyone wants to count it today of all days )

Watching the NASA feed, fingers crossed.

NASA TV

Successful insertion.

Everything looks good so far on MAVEN.

We had a great track on the 70 metre dish in Canberra today.
Ops team said that it went so smoothly that we could have almost done it completely automated except for the manual switch from LGA to HGA.

Click to view attachment
Deep Space Station 43 tracking MAVEN MOI today.

Great job by the team here and in Goldstone. Handing over to Madrid team later tonight (our time) after the 4 second test burn for MOM.

Go DSN!

Congratulations to MAVEN! Now that it's a Mars orbiter I've created a subforum for it in the Mars Orbiters forum, and started a new thread for the mission's commissioning phase.