MAVEN Solar Panel

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

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.

How can you communicate with Mars spacecraft when the Sun is in the way? Learn more about 'solar conjunction' in this 60-second video.

The MAVEN Electra UHF Transceiver Flight Model is shown here.

A lunar eclipse, a solar eclipse and Mars has a close encounter with a comet.

The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) measures the composition and isotopes of thermal neutrals and ions.

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.

Graphic illustrating the MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars.

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.

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...

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...

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,...

On May 16, 2013, the MAVEN spacecraft began nearly three weeks of thermal vacuum cycling, where it was exposed to the temperature swings it will experience during its mission to study the Martian u...

This image is a stereo, panoramic view of various trenches dug by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. The images that make up this panorama were taken by Phoenix's Surface Stereo Imager at about 4 p.m., lo...

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Compex-41, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, along with other agency and contractor officials spoke to members of the news media about preparatio...

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).

When you navigate with a compass you can orient yourself thanks to Earth's global magnetic field. But on Mars, if you were to walk around with a compass it would haphazardly point from one anomaly ...

This radio hardware, the Electra UHF Transceiver on NASA's MAVEN mission to Mars, is designed to provide communication relay support for robots on the surface of Mars.

The Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW) instrument is part of the Particles and Fields (P & F) Package and determines ionospheric properties and wave heating of escaping ions and solar EUV input to ...

The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) instrument, shown here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., before its integration onto NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Ev...

MAVEN will use a Propellant Management Device (PMD), which is a static, all-metal structure inside the fuel tank that uses surface tension to ensure gas free liquid delivery to the tank outlet.

Mars is experiencing large regional dust storms over its northern hemisphere during the past week.

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...

Download a PDF of the MAVEN Fact Sheet.

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