Science AMA Series: we’re Bruce Jakosky, Dave Brain, and Rob Lillis,
science investigators on the MAVEN mission that is orbiting Mars and
studying the planet’s upper atmosphere. AMA!
Abstract
My name is Bruce Jakosky
(http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/about/teampartners/principal-investigator/)
from the University of Colorado. I’m the Principal Investigator of the
MAVEN mission, and have an interest in the complex volatile system on
Mars, reaching from the deep interior to the region that interacts with
the incoming solar wind. My name is Dave Brain
(http://lasp.colorado.edu/~brain/David_Brain/Home.html),
and I’m a member of the science team and an Assistant Professor in
Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. My research focuses on
interactions of the solar wind with planetary magnetospheres and the
implications. And I’m Rob Lillis
(http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~rlillis/), a Research
Scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of
the MAVEN science team. I’m interested in the energy input into the Mars
atmosphere that comes from solar storms and the corresponding response
of the upper atmosphere. The MAVEN
(http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/) spacecraft has been in orbit
around Mars for just over an Earth year. We’re getting enough
measurements that we’ve now been able to see the general behavior of the
upper atmosphere and also its response to a significant solar storm.
We’ve determined that atmospheric gas escapes from Mars to space in
large enough quantities that this loss probably was a major mechanism
for changing the climate on Mars and turning it from a warm, wet
environment to the present-day cold, dry environment. We will be back at
2 pm EST (11 am PST, 7 pm UTC) to answer your questions, Ask us
anything!