Mars

There are eight, count them, eight active missions at Mars, and there should be one more on the surface before the year is out. As 2018 begins, we're approaching the middle of Mars Year 34, with Curiosity and Opportunity (which are both south of the equator) both experiencing some of the coldest temperatures of the year. The equinox comes on May 22, and southern summer solstice on October 16. The dust storm season is expected to begin after that, and it may be a dusty year.

The venerable 2001 Mars Odyssey is enjoying scientific results from its current orbit, in which it passes over the sunlit surface during very early morning. According to project scientist Jeff Plaut, they have no plans to change the orbit this year. THEMIS and the neutron detector are keeping busy. THEMIS has recently begun a Phobos observation campaign, which they plan to continue through 2018.

I asked Daniel Scuka at ESA for an update on Mars Express, and he assembled the following information from multiple mission sources: "MEX is in very good health having just exited from a challenging eclipse season. The season was challenging as it combined a perfect storm of long eclipses (up to 44 minutes), Mars being close to aphelion (so the spacecraft was heated less and received less power from the Sun via its solar arrays) and Solar Conjunction also occurred in the middle of the season which causes impedes the ability to command and receive telemetry from the spacecraft. It is difficult to estimate how much fuel remains as the uncertainties are large, but our best estimate (and hope) is that there is still enough fuel for several years' operations. The batteries are aging, but we estimate that they should last at least until the mid 2020s. The mission control team are now looking at ways to ensure attitude & orientation control in future as the 14-year-old gyros are showing signs of aging. Rosetta tested a 'gyroless' mode and the MEX team are looking to re-use the Rosetta mode on MEX to be able to switch off the gyros for much of the time and so prolong their life. There will be Phobos campaigns next year. In fact we will be changing the orbit very slightly in January 2018 to increase the frequency of Phobos flybys."

Opportunity is expected to continue moseying down Perseverance Valley on the rim of Endeavour throughout 2018, which will be its 15th year of Mars operations. Although it's winter, Opportunity has gotten through the lowest-energy period of the year and enjoyed some solar panel cleaning events that kept its panels productive.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will shift its orbit slightly in order to be in place to cover InSight's November landing. As it did for Curiosity, it will record all the telemetry from the landing and play it back later. Its extended mission has it observing seasonal change with cameras and weather-observing spectrometer; the weather observations will also assist InSight's landing.

How Curiosity spends it year depends on whether they can get the drill working again. If they can, it will probably be parked for a fair amount of time in order to go through the challenging process of learning how to operate the drill and deliver samples in the new way. If they can't, Curiosity will drive, drive, drive. It's currently on top of Vera Rubin Ridge. The next place it will go is down off the ridge to the south into a region where Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted clay minerals.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission is still going strong and has had its mission indefinitely extended. All its science instruments are still operating.

MAVEN continues to study Mars' atmosphere, and is doing so with increasing numbers of different observational modes for its instruments, according to principal investigator Bruce Jakosky. MAVEN operations will go through a substantial change after the end of its current mission extension: it will change its orbit to one that will be better for landed-mission relay, likely lowering the apoapsis. The new orbit will still permit great science, Jakosky says. He added that they are budgeting fuel with an eye toward maintaining operations through 2030 -- necessary because MAVEN may be the only NASA relay satellite available by the time Mars 2020 lands. (Let's all hope that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is still around then, though.)

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter should finish its aerobraking in March. Six weeks after, it will begin its primary science mission, planned to last through 2022. Six months after that, ExoMars will make its first data delivery to the Planetary Science Archive. The mission reached a milestone on November 16, when aerobraking safely brought ExoMars' apoapsis inside of Phobos' orbital distance (9320 kilometers above Mars' center). The team phased the orbit so that Phobos would be very nearly on the opposite side of Mars as ExoMars passed through the torus of space through which Phobos ever passes. They will perform regular data relay tests with NASA surface missions, and routine tandem atmosphere and particle observations with MAVEN. I'm looking forward to the gorgeous photos from CaSSIS!

Finally, as mentioned before, InSight lands in November!