MAVEN Launching

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

Crews guide NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, spacecraft, inside a payload fairing, into place atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at the Vertical Integration Facili...

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

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-...

This visualization shows MAVEN and Comet Siding Spring making their way through the solar system to a close encounter near Mars. This animation maintains a fixed camera above the ecliptic plane of ...

The MAVEN spacecraft core structure is successfully lowered and mated to the hydrazine propulsion tank and boat tail assembly at Lockheed Martin, Denver.

Download a PDF of the MAVEN Fact Sheet.

Inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians perform a spin test of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spa...

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on a 1...

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 ...

These profiles show the brightness of auroras in Mars’ atmosphere at different altitudes. The solid black profile on the right is from a September 2017 solar storm. Barely visible along the vertica...

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft is encapsulated atop an Atlas V rocket.

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.

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...

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

NASA Science missions circle Earth, the Sun, the Moon, Mars and many other destinations within our solar system, including spacecraft that look out even further into our universe. The Science Fleet...

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...

MAVEN selfie composite, unannotated

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,...

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

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

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...

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 ...

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 Martian surface bears ample evidence of flowing water in its youth, from crater lakes and riverbeds to minerals that only form in water. But today Mars is cold and dry, and scientists think tha...