NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft in orbit of Mars has begun a series of aerobraking maneuvers with the planet’s atmosphere to lower its orbit as the craft prepares for its added task of serving as a communications relay station for NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 rover scheduled to launch next year.
The orbit lowering operation comes four years after MAVEN’s arrival at the Red Planet and while the craft’s instruments continue to reveal how Mars’ atmosphere interacts with the solar wind, which recently involved solving a case of stolen electrons.