MAVEN Launches

This artist's concept shows NASA's Mars orbiters lining up behind the Red Planet for their "duck and cover" maneuver to shield them fro comet dust that may result from the close flyby of comet Sidi...

The MAVEN spacecraft is loaded into the belly of a C-17 Globemaster at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado on its way to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will be prepared for a November 18t...

This anaglyph, acquired by NASA's Phoenix Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on Sol 33, the 33rd Martian day of the mission (June 28, 2008), shows a stereoscopic 3D view of the Martian surface near the...

This artist's concept depicts the early Martian environment (left) - believed to contain liquid water and a thicker atmosphere - versus the cold, dry environment seen at Mars today (right).

Two days before the scheduled launch to Mars, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft rolled out of the Cape Canaveral Air For...

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the United Launch Alliance Centaur second stage is lifted for stacking atop its Atlas V first stage at Launch Pad 41 in preparation for the Mars Atmo...

As of August 29th, the MAVEN spacecraft is 198 million kilometers (123 million miles) from Earth and 6.6 million kilometers (4.1 million miles) from Mars.

The MAVEN high-gain antenna measures 6.5 feet (79 inches) in diameter by 3.3 feet (40 inches) tall. The reflector is made of Kevlar honeycomb core sandwiched between two composite face sheets. It i...

The engineering model of the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) sensor that is part of the Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW)/EUV experiment on MAVEN and will measure the solar EUV input to the atmosphere.

Conceptual image of wind (blue arrows) flowing over rugged Martian terrain and generating disturbances that propagate upward as atmospheric gravity waves (grey lines). 

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, spacecraft arrives at the pad at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Stat...

This image is from a scientific visualization of the electric currents around Mars.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, spacecraft, mounted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, rolls out from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Vertical Integration Fac...

Scientists think that the collision of neutral hydrogen molecules may have helped to drive the Martian atmosphere into space over billions of years.

In the late evening hours of August 2, 2013, the MAVEN spacecraft arrived on the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars.

Technicians and engineers oversee MAVEN after it was attached to a processing stand.

The MAVEN spacecraft structure is placed into a reaction chamber, where it completed a static loads test to ensure that it will withstand the extreme forces of launch.

The MAVEN spacecraft in Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations phase at Lockheed Martin.

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V first stage is lifted for stacking at Launch Pad 41 in preparation for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution,...

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Ultraviolet images from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, MAVEN, were used to make this movie of rapid cloud formation on Mars.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft underwent acoustics testing on Feb. 13, 2013 at Lockheed Martin Space Systems' Reverberant Acoustic Laboratory.

This is an artist rendition of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Mars presents intriguing questions to scientists: How did the Red Planet become so desolate? Did Mars once look like Earth? How has it changed? The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (M...