MAVEN Launching

A large dust storm on Mars, nearly twice the size of the United States, covered the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet in early January 2022, leading to some of NASA’s explorers on the surface h...

Engineers work on the MAVEN spacecraft, which is dominated by the high-gain antenna that is crucial to communications with NASA's Deep Space Network.

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

Mars was once on track to become a thriving Earth-like planet, yet today it is an apparently lifeless wasteland. A NASA spacecraft named MAVEN will soon journey to Mars to find out what went wrong ...

Comet Siding Spring is about to fly historically close to Mars. The encounter could spark Martian auroras, a meteor shower, and other unpredictable effects. Whatever happens, NASA's fleet of Mars s...

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket stands ready to boost the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on a 10-...

Aerobraking plan for MAVEN

This animation shows the sudden appearance of a bright aurora on Mars during a solar storm. The purple-white color scheme shows the intensity of ultraviolet light over the course of the event, from...

Interact with this 3D model of MAVEN.

Three views of an escaping atmosphere, obtained by MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, N...

MAVEN, which stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, is a new NASA spacecraft embarking on a mission to study Mars' upper atmosphere, seeking to learn how the atmosphere and environment ...

MAVEN selfie composite, unannotated

The Atlas V rocket carrying the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft sits at the launch pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station after rolling out from Space Launch Co...

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

Download NASA's Mars Orbiter coloring sheet.

MAVEN's Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph obtained this image of Mars on July 13, 2016, when the planet appeared nearly full when viewed from the highest altitudes in the MAVEN orbit.

Inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians prepare the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft for enc...

Download the PDF or PPT of the MAVEN Overview Presentation.

This ultraviolet image near Mars’ South Pole was taken by MAVEN on July 10 2016 and shows the atmosphere and surface during southern spring.

The Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA) is a part of the Particles and Fields (P & F) Package and will measure the solar wind and ionospheric electrons.

MAVEN selfie composite, annotated

The first demonstration of NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter's capability to relay data from a Mars surface mission, on Nov. 6, 2014, included this and other images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The im...

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

The close encounter between comet Siding Spring and Mars flooded the planet with an invisible tide of charged particles from the comet's coma. The dense inner coma reached the surface of the planet...