MAVEN Solar Panel

MAVEN selfie composite, annotated

The Solar Wind Electron Analyzer, shown here before being delivered to Lockheed Martin for integration with the MAVEN spacecraft.

Five decades of successful NASA missions to the Red Planet, 1965-2015.

Members of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) team celebrate at the Lockheed Martin operations center in Littleton, Colorado, Sunday night, after getting confirmation that the space...

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...

NASA managers poll the launch team to ensure all is ready for the liftoff of an Atlas V at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41.

MAVEN was launched into a Hohmann Transfer Orbit with periapsis at Earth’s orbit and apoapsis at the distance of the orbit of Mars. The spacecraft will travel more than 180 degrees around the Sun i...

The diagram explains the cause of Mars’ glowing nightside atmosphere. 

A map of MAVEN's IUVS’s auroral detections in December 2014 overlaid on Mars’ surface.

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...

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission reached a milestone in September 2011.

To receive the same amount of starlight as Mars receives from our Sun, a planet orbiting an M-type red dwarf would have to be positioned much closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. 

NASA's next mission to Mars will carry a DVD containing over 1,100 entries selected as a result of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics Going to Mars...

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...

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.

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...

Billions of years ago when the Red Planet was young, it appears to have had a thick atmosphere that was warm enough to support oceans of liquid water - a critical ingredient for life. (Audio: music...

Ancient riverbeds, crater lakes and flood channels all attest to Mars's warm, watery past. So how did the Red Planet evolve from a once hospitable world into the cold, dry desert that we see today?

The MAVEN Electra UHF Transceiver Flight Model is shown here.

This image shows atomic hydrogen scattering sunlight in the upper atmosphere of Mars, as seen by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph on NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission.

Aerobraking plan for MAVEN

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

Mars's thick early atmosphere was likely lost to space, and the Sun is a potential culprit. When high-energy solar photons strike the upper Martian atmosphere they can ionize gas molecules, causing...

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...

MAVEN's Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph obtained images of rapid cloud formation on Mars on July 9-10, 2016.