The MAVEN mission launched on an Atlas V November 18, 2013. After a ten-month ballistic cruise phase, Mars orbit insertion occurred on September 22, 2014. Following a 5-week transition phase, the spacecraft began orbiting Mars at a 75 inclination, with a 4.5 hour period and periapsis altitude of 140-170 km (density corridor of 0.05-0.15 kg/km3). Over a one-Earth-year period, periapsis will precess over a wide range of latitude and local time, while MAVEN obtains detailed measurements of the upper atmosphere, ionosphere, planetary corona, solar wind, interplanetary/Mars magnetic fields, solar EUV and solar energetic particles, thus defining the interactions between the Sun and Mars.
MAVEN will explore down to the homopause during a series of five 5-day ???deep dip??? campaigns for which periapsis will be lowered to an atmospheric density of 2 kg/km3 (~125 km altitude) in order to sample the transition from the collisional lower atmosphere to the collisionless upper atmosphere. These five campaigns will be interspersed though the mission to sample the subsolar region, the dawn and dusk terminators, the anti-solar region, and the north pole.
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