NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver visited Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County on Monday for a progress update on the next mission to Mars, MAVEN — Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN — as well as the heat shield for Orion, the next human-carrying space mission.
“These are two of our prized missions,” said Garver , a Colorado College graduate who is now NASA’s second in command. “(MAVEN) will allow us to continue to ‘follow the water.'”
In addition to designing and building the MAVEN spacecraft, Lockheed Martin will operate mission control following the Nov. 2013 launch.
Garver and her team suited up and toured the cleanroom where the the orbiter is currently being assembled. Following a briefing by the team, NASA officials found the project to be on schedule and on budget.
MAVEN is what industry insiders call an orbiter, not a lander. The solar-powered spacecraft won’t have the dramatic surface landing like Curiosity, but will remain in the Red Planet’s orbit while studying its atmosphere.
Scientists believe that Mars was possibly once habitable, but that the sun stripped away 99 percent of its atmosphere over time, leaving the cold and dusty environment that it is today. MAVEN will be loaded with scientific instruments to measure the compositional change over a two-year period.
Colorado is also home to the mission’s principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Between the university and Lockheed Martin, there are about175 full time jobs dedicated to MAVEN in Colorado.
“Those are jobs all the way from high tech down to undergraduates,” said Nick Schneider, MAVEN’s ultraviolet spectrometer lead at CU.
With future budgetary fears for NASA swirling, Garver outlined the agency’s major priorities at a press conference Monday morning. Number one, Garver said, are the Space Launch System (SLS) deep space missions — which Orion falls under.
Designed to launch humans farther into space than ever before, including to Mars, Orion will mark a new generation in space exploration. Lockheed Martin is building the spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but the heat shield is being built at the Jefferson County facility.
For Garver, the most interesting aspect of her visit was seeing the convergence of scientists with engineers, which she calls the “healthy tension” of the industry.
Garver gave the example of watching Schneider, who has been working on this project at CU for seven years and designed one of the eight instruments that will be aboard the spacecraft, see MAVEN for the first time and meet the engineer responsible for his device.
“She is his advocate in that room,” Garver said. “You have scientists and then you have the engineers, and it was great to see those come together today.”
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638, kpainter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kristenpainter
