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CU-Boulder to Lead NASA
Mission to Probe Past Climate of Mars
In the largest research contract ever
awarded to the University of Colorado at
Boulder, the Laboratory for Atmospheric
and Space Physics (LASP) has been selected
by NASA to lead a $485 million orbiting
space mission slated to launch in 2013
to probe the past climate of Mars, including
its potential for harboring life over the
ages.
The team, led by CU-Boulder's Laboratory
for Atmospheric and Space Physics, will
design, build and operate the Mars Atmosphere
and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN.
Carrying three instrument suites, the spacecraft
will probe the upper atmosphere of Mars
and its interactions with the sun, said
LASP Associate Director Bruce Jakosky,
principal investigator for the mission.
MAVEN's three instrument suites include
a remote sensing package built by LASP
that will determine global characteristics
of the upper atmosphere. A particles and
fields payload built by the University
of California, Berkeley, with support from
LASP and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
contains six instruments that will characterize
the solar wind, upper atmosphere and the
ionosphere -- a layer of charged particles
very high in the Martian atmosphere.
The third instrument suite, a Neutral
Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer provided
by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
will measure the composition and isotopes
of neutral and charged forms of gases in
the Martian atmosphere.
The MAVEN science team includes three
LASP scientists heading instrument teams
-- Nick Schneider, Frank Eparvier and Robert
Ergun -- as well as a large supporting
team of scientists, engineers and mission
operations specialists.
MAVEN also will include participation
by a number of CU-Boulder graduate and
undergraduate students in the coming years.
Currently there are more than 100 undergraduate
and graduate students working on research
projects at LASP, providing training for
future careers as engineers and scientists.
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