Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, February 28, 2011 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
David Mitchell (Project Manager) & Bruce Jakosky (PI)
"MAVEN"
ABSTRACT --
Project Manager: Overview of the Project organization; the milestones
achieved and the milestones planned ahead on the Road to Mars; the
challenges and opportunities in working on a mission with a tight planetary
launch window.
Principal Investigator: The MAVEN mission will explore the Mars upper atmosphere and ionosphere and its interactions with solar-wind, solar storms, and solar-EUV energy drivers. The goals of the mission are to understand the current structure of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere, the loss rates at the present epoch and the processes that control them, and the integrated loss to space through time. These will allow us to understand the habitability and how it has changed through time and the history of water on Mars. Launch will occur during a three-week launch window beginning November 18, 2013. The primary mission runs for one Earth year beginning in October, 2014. The elliptical orbit will allow measurements to be made throughout the entire upper atmosphere, at altitudes from the homopause to deep into the hot-atom corona, and at various combinations of latitude and local solar time, thereby mapping out the behavior in three-dimensional near-Mars space. The payload includes (i) a Particles and Fields package that measures the magnetic field, solar energetic particles, ionosphere properties, solar-wind properties, energetic ions, and incoming solar EUV, (ii) a Remote-Sensing package that contains an imaging ultraviolet spectrometer that can map ion and neutral properties, measure D/H, and determine H and D escape, and (iii) a mass spectrometer package to look at thermal neutrals and ions.
SPEAKER -- David Mitchell began his career in 1984 with the Department of Navy testing solid rocket motor systems. In 1987 he joined GSFC with much of his early work focused on expendable launch vehicles, including the successful Delta launches of the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder missions. In 1997, he joined the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) Program as the Source Evaluation Board chairman, then Observatory Manager, and ultimately as the GOES-N Series Project Manager and GOES Deputy Program Manager. During his tenure on GOES, he was recognized with the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. In 2005, he was detailed to the Kennedy Space Center to work on strategic planning initiatives, and then a related detail at NASA Headquarters. In 2006, David worked as a NASA Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Bill Nelson. In October 2006, he returned to GSFC and became the Deputy Associate Director of the Earth Science Projects Division. Concurrently, he was the Project Manager for a Mars Scout proposal effort. With MAVEN¬πs selection as NASA¬πs next Mars Scout mission, David has become the MAVEN Project Manager. He is also the Deputy Associate Director for the Explorers & Heliophysics Projects Division.
David received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his M.S. in Engineering Administration from George Washington University. He is a Senior Fellow with the Council for Excellence in Government, a Senior Executive Fellow with the Kennedy School of Government/Harvard University, and is a graduate of NASA¬πs Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program.
Bruce Jakosky is a Professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the Dept. of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and is Associate Director for Science at LASP. He has been at the University since 1982, when he received his Ph.D. in Planetary Science and Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology. His research interests are in the geology of planetary surfaces, the evolution of the martian atmosphere and climate, the potential for life on Mars and elsewhere, and the philosophical and societal issues in astrobiology. He has been involved with the Viking, Solar Mesosphere Explorer, Clementine, Mars Observer, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Science Laboratory, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions. He headed the University of Colorado's team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute for more than ten years.
Dr. Jakosky is the Principal Investigator in the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. MAVEN is a Mars Scout mission currently in development, scheduled to be launched in November 2013 and to arrive at Mars for its one-year mission in September 2014. He has published more than 120 papers in the refereed scientific literature, and has authored or co-authored a number of books, including The Search for Life on Other Planets and Science, Society, and the Search for Life in the Universe.