NASA's Mars-Bound MAVEN Seeks Answer to Planet's Greatest Mystery

What's This?

By Amanda Wills2013-11-18 13:52:28 UTC

We call Mars the Red Planet because, on the surface, it looks like a rusty dust bowl, incapable of ever harboring life. However, our galactic neighbor didn't always appear this way. Billions of years ago, it looked a lot like our own planet — dotted with puffy clouds and covered in deep blue water.

So, what happened?

NASA will launch MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft on Monday at 1:28 p.m. ET in search of the answer. Once it reaches its destination in September 2014, MAVEN will explore the planet's upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.

SEE ALSO: Curiosity's Biggest Discoveries on Mars

Mars would have needed a thick atmosphere in order to become a wet planet. Today, it's a cold, icy desert. Simply put, that protective atmosphere simply vanished, and scientists have no idea why.

Filling in the history of Mars will teach us more about our own planet. Are we facing a similar fate?

"We're exposed to the same solar winds, the same environmental factors that Mars was in getting to the point to where it is today," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Mashable Monday morning.

"What happened to its atmosphere that enabled the sun to just come along and scrape [it] away? If there are things that we can do here on Earth that will prevent that, then we want to be able to do them so that we don't end up like Mars," he said.

The spacecraft will orbit Mars for one year, collecting data on Mars' thinning atmosphere. MAVEN will dip down to about 93 miles above the surface at its closest point to take measurements of the lower atmosphere. It will drift up to 3,728 miles away to take ultraviolet images of the entire planet.

MAVEN will dip in and out of various points of Mars' atmosphere throughout its mission. The artists conception below shows how the spacecraft will look during orbit, zooming in and panning around.

MAVEN will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Crews guided the spacecraft into a payload faring, which is then placed on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Image: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Last week, NASA released an animation of what Mars looked like billions of years ago, from lush lakes under blue skies, to the dusty tan hues today. Goddard's Conceptual Image Lab created the imagery based on previous data on mineral presence and crater patterns.

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Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Topics: Curiosity, curiosity rover, Mars, NASA, space, U.S., US & World, World