How the MAVEN spacecraft – led by CU Boulder – could help pave the way for human exploration on Mars

NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, led by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, was supposed to operate for one year when it entered orbit on September 21, 2014. Ten years later, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter has been a boon to scientists studying the red planet and they hope it will remain in operation for years to come. 

In May, MAVEN researchers got to watch as a huge solar storm hit the planet along with a massive dose of radiation. The MAVEN spacecraft is an orbiter, so it won’t ever land on the surface of Mars like the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. Instead, it’s designed to examine the Martian atmosphere, which principal investigator Shannon Curry said “holds a number of secrets in terms of our past, present, and future.”

Here are some takeaways from Curry’s interview with Colorado Matters.

On the question of water and life on Mars

“We believe that Mars was likely habitable billions of years ago, and it had oceans’ worth of water on it. However, because Mars doesn't have a magnetic field like Earth's and because its atmosphere was thinner, the atmosphere slowly started getting eroded away by the sun and became very, very thin. For water to be in stable liquid form, you need to have enough atmospheric pressure pushing down on it. So when Mars's atmosphere began eroding over billions of years, that atmospheric pressure got too light, and then the water started evaporating and started escaping to space. Now, some of that water was trapped beneath the surface, but we believe with MAVEN and the observations we've made that the majority of water evaporated into the atmosphere and then was stripped away by the solar wind.”

On whether intelligent life exists in the universe

“I personally think there is, or was, intelligent life or will be somewhere out there in the universe. However, in our solar system, we don't have any sign of that. And had there been intelligent life, we've been able to at least image or explore most of the planets and moons enough that we've seen no sign of that. However, we have upcoming missions like Europa Clipper and then possibly future missions to places like Enceladus. These are icy waterworld moons of Jupiter and Saturn, things like Titan as well. So these moons could very well also harbor life and most likely a very simple-celled organism. The bigger question of is there intelligent life in the universe, I think statistically it's hard to see how there's not, but the big question is would we ever get to interact with it in our lifetime? And what is the likelihood of that? Probably on the low side, but here's to hoping…”

Defining space weather and why it’s important for scientists to understand it

“When we talk about space weather, we definitely mean sun or solar space weather. So that would mean these eruptions coming off of the sun are carrying magnetic fields. They're carrying hot plasma and they're carrying radiation. So that's just really high energy light, and those things just go ripping and propagating through space. They can actually damage spacecraft and other assets we have in space.They can damage solar panels, they can damage electronics. So it's something that we need to keep studying.”

What scientists can learn from the solar storm that occurred in May

“I’m going to call it the May Superstorm. It was one of those solar storms seen throughout the solar system. It was just incredible. One of the reasons we're all so excited about it, not just at Mars, but throughout the Heliosphere (is that) it's one of the biggest storms we've seen in two decades. So when we think about what constitutes a big solar storm, that's going to be the speed of the storm, and also how much radiation that storm is delivering. These storms erupt from the surface of the sun and carry with it hot charged particles, and the ones that are moving really fast have a high radiation dosage. So for example, on Mars, the Curiosity Rover had a radiation detector on it, and this storm registered the equivalent of 30 chest x-rays. That's something we take very seriously, especially on the surface. So when we think about future exploration, we want to make sure we understand these storms so we could actually have a first warning system for astronauts."

Why researching the Martian atmosphere is one key to enabling astronauts to land on Mars

“As you enter an atmosphere, things start to heat up very quickly, and that's effectively friction in the atmosphere, and we have to make sure that we enter the atmosphere at just such an angle to make sure that it doesn't heat up too much. We also want to make sure you don't want to come in too steep or too shallow, because what can happen is you can actually almost skip off the atmosphere, like when you take a skipping stone and it skips over water. So we have to make sure we have the exact right angle and to do this we use heat shields – tiles made of special materials that are packed in very close together – that can absorb heat from that atmosphere – all of that drag and friction to make sure everyone on the inside of that spacecraft is safe.”