MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution)

MAVEN's launch day forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of acceptable conditions at the opening of the launch window Monday at 1:28 p.m. EST. Concerns are centered on a cold front that is expected to near Florida on Monday and possibly disrupt the weather around Cape Canaveral with thick clouds and possible showers. In …

This is a concept video by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland of how the Martian atmosphere and landscape may have changed in the past 4 billion years. MAVEN's mission is to find out whether the theories of change are correct. MAVEN will orbit Mars with a suite of instruments that will scan the …

Curiosity will be working on the Martian surface as MAVEN orbits overhead taking its own readings. Together with previous exploration missions on and above Mars, the data is drawing a more complete picture of the Red Planet.

We're one small but important step closer to Mars this morning after the launch team placed MAVEN on the top of the Atlas V rocket that will send the probe to the Red Planet. While most of the Cape Canaveral region was sleeping, a crew drove the MAVEN spacecraft from its processing hangar at Kennedy …

After showing they could build rockets strong enough to reach space, it didn't take long for rocket scientists in America and Russia to begin sending satellites toward Mars. The first launch took place Oct. 10, 1960, from the Soviet Union almost three years to the day since the nation launched the first satellite, Sputnik. This …

Here's what MAVEN looked like just before engineers and technicians fit the two-piece payload fairing around it. The spacecraft's solar arrays and instruments have been folded up. The fairing with MAVEN inside will be bolted to the top of an Atlas V rocket for launch at 1:28 p.m. EST on Nov. 18 from Cape Canaveral …

Each of MAVEN's solar array "wings" has a magnetometer on its tip to take readings of Martian magnetic field as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet. The data is seen as crucial to evaluate the interaction between the solar wind from the sun and the thin atmosphere of Mars.

The launch team for MAVEN will have two hours to begin the flight on launch day. The window opens Nov. 18 at 1:28 p.m. EST and closes at 3:28 p.m. EST. The launch window is dictated by a number of factors, primarily the alignment of Earth and MAVEN's destination, Mars. The spacecraft will fly into …