NASA is attempting some brief, interplanetary changes, in order to brace up for the launch of its next Mars rover. NASA’s 4-year-old atmosphere-sniffing Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission is commencing on a new crusade i.e. to strengthen its orbit around Mars.

The operation will diminish the highest point of the MAVEN spacecraft’s obovate orbit from 3,850 miles to 2,800 miles (6,200 to 4,500 kilometers) above the surface and make it ready for some added authority as a data-broadcast satellite for NASA’s 2020 Mars rover, which would be starting from next year.The MAVEN space capsule has been revolving around Mars since 2014 September, sometimes plunging into the Martian atmosphere in order to study the way it has changed over time.

According to sources, NASA is planning to load up the space shuttle with an important task: perfroming as a communications relay for the 2020 Mars rover mission. Jim Watzin, director of NASAs Mars Exploration Prograam stated that the MAVEN spaceship have already taught them how Mars lost its atmosphere and also offers other systemactic understanding on the development of the Maritoian climate.

While MAVEN’s new orbit will not be extremely smaller than its current orbit, even this small change will drastically improve its communications capacity. In the past, MAVEN has been authorized to transmit signals from NASA’s Curiosity rover; however, in order to help with the forthcoming Mars 2020 mission, NASA is planning to move the orbit even adjacent to the Martian surface, enhancing its ability to radiate signals home

The MAVEN space shuttle carries an ultra high-frequency radio transceiver, akin to receivers carried on other Mars space shuttles, which allows it to transmit data between Earth and rovers or landers which are on Mars.

Over the next few months, MAVEN engineers would be using a navigation technique called as aerobraking such as applying the brakes on a car — to take advantage of the shuffle of the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere and to slow the spaceshuttle down gradually, orbit by orbit.

Based on the tracking of the space shuttle by the navigation team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado, engineers will start to carefully lower the lowest part of the spacecraft’s orbit into the Martian upper atmosphere over the next few days by igniting its thrusters. The spacecraft will revolve Mars at this lower altitude about 360 times over the next 2.5 months, curtailing marginally with each pass through the atmosphere.