1. About
  2. Earth
    1. ISS
    2. Aqua
    3. GOES-14
    4. JWST
  3. Moon
    1. LADEE
    2. NRHO
  4. Mercury
    1. MESSENGER
  5. Venus
    1. Venus Express
  6. Mars
    1. MRO
    2. MAVEN
  7. Interplanetary
    1. MAVEN transfer

MAVEN

Martian orbit

Files

Click here to download the trajectory.
Click here to download the run options file.

Description

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is a NASA mission to study the Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.  It has been orbiting Mars since late 2014.  MAVEN uses an eccentric and highly inclined orbit.  The orbit precesses, but not in synch with Mars’s motion about the Sun; its orbit was chosen such that the probe can observe the atmosphere at a variety of latitudes and solar illumination angles.

MAVEN benefits little from planetary shielding due to its high maximum altitude of approximately 6500 km.  Because the orbit precesses relatively slowly, we do not obtain full coverage of all possible Sun-Mars-MAVEN geometries in a single Martian year.  This irregular coverage is reflected in the “lumpy” directional flux maps below.  Note that MEM does not include the hypothesized (but not yet observed) dust tori produced by the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.

Graphics

Trajectory in inertial frame

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Trajectory in Sun-centered ecliptic frame

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Meteoroid flux and properties

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Meteoroid directionality in body-fixed frame

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