NASA Mars Mission Escapes Government Shutdown, Stays On Schedule

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NASA Mars Mission Escapes Government Shutdown, Stays On Schedule
Eric Mack, Contributor  10/21/2013 @ 6:27PM



MAVEN, NASA mars mission spared from shutdown  English: Artist's Concept of MAVEN, set to launch in 2013. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



The two-week government shutdown paralyzed the vast majority of NASA for the first half of October, leaving only a skeleton crew of essential staff to keep things running and make sure the folks on the International Space Station have a few familiar, gravity-bound voices to talk to. But MAVEN, the Mars  Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, was also deemed essential enough to escape the shutdown and today remains on schedule for launch next month.

The MAVEN probe will orbit Mars to study the red planet and try to figure out what caused the apparent vanishing of its atmosphere and water sources into space. The launch window for MAVEN to reach its destination opens on November 18th for only three weeks. Had it been delayed by a government shutdown and missed the window, it’s possible that the team would have had to wait until the next launch window opens… in 2016.

As Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for the MAVEN mission explained upon learning that the project would be exempt from the shutdown earlier this month:

A delay in the launch date by more than a week past the end of the nominal launch period, or a delay of launch to 2016, would require additional fuel to get into orbit. This would have precluded having sufficient fuel for MAVEN to carry out its science mission and to operate as a relay for any significant time.

The “relay” operation that he mentions refers to the role MAVEN will play as a link between Earth and the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers on the surface of Mars. Humanity currently relies on two aging spacecraft launched in 2001 and 2005 for this function, and MAVEN is the only planned replacement that will be able to tag them out.

“We continue to work toward a November 18  launch, and we are on track,” Jakosky told me in a follow-up email late last week as the shutdown was coming to a close. “The NASA shutdown wasn’t a significant  issue, in that the people who are necessary for MAVEN preparations have  continued working once we started back up.  Having the rest of NASA shut  down presented some interesting differences from standard practice (for  example, with reviews and other non-hardware-related activities that  were scheduled), but nothing that created a significant problem. ”

MAVEN program manager Guy Beutelschies at Lockheed Martin LMT -2.79% told me that thanks to “some long nights and weekend work, we are on track for meeting the originally planned date of Nov. 1 for the start of launch vehicle integration.”

Thanks to a seemingly rare moment of clear-eyed bureaucratic prioritizing, billions already invested into the exploration of Mars will not be scuttled and by MAVEN will be in place to give us another eye on Mars by the second half of next year.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/10/21/nasa-mars-mission-escapes-government-shutdown-stays-on-schedule/?partner=yahootix