A navigation system glitch that struck NASA's MAVEN at Mars earlier this year has hobbled the spacecraft's ability to conduct science and study the Red Planet's atmosphere.
NASA officials wrote in a May 18 update that the MAVEN spacecraft went into a protective mode on February 22 when its vital measurement units began to exhibit strange behavior. While in safe mode, a spaceship shuts down all science and waits for instructions from its flight controllers on how to recover.
NASA was able to revive MAVEN in a limited capacity in the weeks that followed. The primary antenna is pointed at Earth so that the flight control team can communicate with it.
NASA officials wrote in the update that MAVEN cannot perform communications relays for other spacecraft on Mars and is only performing limited science observations.
There is a brief history of missions to Mars.
The MAVEN IMU system relies on ring laser gryroscopes, four reaction wheels and a four-sided pyramid to position the orbiter. The orbiter has two star tracker cameras that can take images of stars and feed them into a stellar detection system to help determine its orientation in space.
NASA officials said that MAVEN was in safe mode until April 19 when flight controllers switched it from its IMUs to the star-tracking system.
NASA officials wrote in the update that not all of the science instruments have been able to take data while the high gain antenna is restricted to pointing toward Earth.
The MAVEN mission was launched by NASA and arrived at the Red Planet in October. Its mission is to understand how Mars became a dusty red world. NASA extended the MAVEN mission by three years to allow it to continue its science work.
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