BOULDER — The Colorado-led MAVEN mission cleared the most dangerous hurdle of its life cycle Monday when it successfully left Earth and began its spaceflight to Mars.
The NASA-funded program infused an estimated $400 million into Colorado's economy, in addition to the $187 million contract awarded to Centennial-based United Launch Alliance for catapulting it out of Earth's atmosphere and onto its proper trajectory using its Atlas V rocket.
MAVEN, which stands for Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN, is the first NASA mission devoted to understanding the Red Planet's upper atmosphere.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County designed, assembled and tested the spacecraft. About 52 minutes after ULA completed its phase of the mission, sending MAVEN on its merry way, mission operations were handed over to Lockheed's Waterton Canyon facility just outside Denver, which will monitor the spacecraft for the remainder of its life span.
The mission's principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky, is from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, which will act as the science operations center. LASP also built two instruments and helped with a third that is aboard the spacecraft.
Josh Lothringer is a senior at CU majoring in astrophysics and was able to provide support to the MAVEN team before the spacecraft and its instruments left Colorado for Florida. The mission launched from Cape Canaveral.
"It's sort of surreal that something I've been in the same room with is now traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour," Loth-ringer said.
Scientists hope the scientific readings it obtains shed light on the baffling question, "What happened to the water?" Mars exhibits traits that suggest it may have had bodies of water covering its ancient surface. But the atmosphere today is far too thin to sustain life. Scientists hope MAVEN will send back data that will help explain how that atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds.
The $671 million mission was on time and on budget, with hundreds of Coloradans working on it throughout the past decade.
It will take 10 months for the spacecraft to reach Mars. Lockheed Martin plans to conduct an orbit-insertion maneuver next Sept. 22. While the launch is considered the riskiest phase of the mission, orbit insertion is a close second.
"That is the big deal," said Steve Jolly, chief engineer for Lockheed Martin. "If you miss Mars, you just fly by and can never make it back."
Jolly said many missions throughout history have met devastating fates when approaching the Red Planet.
The primary mission is slated for one earth year — with the closest orbit reaching 90 miles and several "deep dips" planned that will bring the spacecraft within 55 miles of Mars' surface.
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638, email@example.com or twitter.com/kristenpainter