NASA just rescued its Mars probe from verge of 'death'; agency explains averted crisis

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, which has served as NASA's eyes and ears around Mars since 2014 was rescued from a major "existential crisis", as the agency puts it. The orbiter, according to NASA, was recovered from the safe mode last week after its navigation system encountered some problems and the team lost contact with their explorer. Recently, the agency released a report wherein it explained the crisis MAVEN underwent.

What happened with MAVEN?

In its report, NASA explained that the team lost contact with MAVEN on February 22 after it performed a routinely scheduled power cycle of IMU-1. For the unversed, IMU stands for Inertial Measurement Units and there are two identical IMUs on board the spacecraft. These two pieces of equipment are used to determine the spacecraft’s attitude in space by measuring its rate of rotation, basically orientation. While the engineers were able to re-establish contact with the orbiter, they were unable to determine its orientation from either of the IMUs. 

A spacecraft needs to be in the perfect orientation because its antennas need to be in the right direction for receiving commands and sending back signals. When nothing worked, the mission team decided to put the orbiter in "safe mode" as a last resort and it ceased all planned activities, including science and relay operations to save power. 

However, the crisis prompted NASA to develop the all-stellar mode before schedule. The all-stellar mode enables a spacecraft to navigate by the stars without the need for IMUs. The mission team has predicted that the IMU-2's lifespan will come to an end in October and the all-stellar mode would be required to carry out the exploration mission anyway. "When we recognized in the fall that IMU-2 was degrading, we knew we were going to have to shorten the schedule for all-stellar mode. The spacecraft team rose to the challenge, working under intense pressure after the anomaly", Rich Burns, the MAVEN project manager said in a statement.

MAVEN was launched to Mars in 2013 to explore the planet's upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Thanks to MAVEN, scientists are also monitoring their interactions with the Sun and solar wind to find out why and how Mars lost its atmosphere.