MAVEN Launches

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

This photo taken on March 3 shows the large hydrazine propellant tank prior to integration with the core structure of the MAVEN spacecraft at a Lockheed Martin clean room near Denver.

NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft to study the upper atmosphere of the planet Mars. It's called MAVEN or the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN.

This is an artist's concept of the MAVEN spacecraft, showing the wedge-shaped “diving boards” that hold the Magnetometers at both ends of the solar arrays.

The Magnetometer (MAG) is a part of the Particles and Fields (P & F) Package and measures interplanetary solar wind and ionospheric magnetic fields.

The Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrometer (IUVS) is a part of the Remote Sensing (RS) Package and measures global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

Download a PDF of the MAVEN Fact Sheet.

Graphic illustrating the MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars.

This artist's concept shows the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet, with a fanciful image of her home planet in the background.

Following liftoff of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulated the agency and contracto...

NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, inside a payload fairing, is hoisted to the top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at the Vertical Integration Facility at ...

Artist’s rendering of a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the planet's upper atmosphere.

Aerobraking plan for MAVEN

A dust storm continues to envelop the Red Planet and Curiosity’s labs are back in action.

MAVEN selfie composite, annotated

This graphic depicts paths by which carbon has been exchanged among Martian interior, surface rocks, polar caps, waters and atmosphere, and also depicts a mechanism by which it is lost from the atm...

Following liftoff, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft separates from the Centaur upper stage.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft went through weeks of processing to ensure it was ready for a 10-month trip to the Red Planet. Watch as time-lapse video condense...

This graphic depicts what Mars' atmosphere would have looked like to a viewer with ultraviolet-seeing eyes after a meteor shower on Oct. 19, 2014. It combines an image from the Imaging Ultraviolet ...

Left column: From top to bottom, MAVEN data showing solar wind, solar energetic particles, proton aurora strength, diffuse aurora strength. On August 30th, a solar storm (a coronal mass ejection) i...

This graph shows how the amount of water in the atmosphere of Mars varies depending on the season.

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 concept depicts NASA’s Space Launch System, which will be the most powerful rocket ever built. It is designed to boost the agency’s Orion spacecraft on deep space missions, including to...

MAVEN selfie composite, unannotated

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.