Animation of MAVEN orbiting Mars

The MAVEN spacecraft is loaded into the belly of a C-17 Globemaster at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado on its way to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will be prepared for a November 18t...

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...

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex-41 liquid oxygen began flowing into the Atlas first stage booster for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission.

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).

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.

This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest.

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 ...

MAVEN Launching.

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...

The MAVEN spacecraft is moved into the Thermal Vacuum Chamber (TVAC) at Lockheed Martin on May 16, 2013.

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.

The Remote Sensing package aboard the MAVEN spacecraft, was conceived, designed and built by the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP) at Boulder.

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).

These eight graphs present data from the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer on NASA's MAVEN orbiter identifying ions of different metals added to the Martian atmosphere shortly after comet C/201...

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...

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

Robert Lin, the late director of the Space Sciences Laboratory, discusses how NASA's MAVEN spacecraft will study the interaction of the Martian atmosphere with the solar wind. MAVEN's findings will...

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...

Inside Kennedy’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility technicians clean the electricity-producing solar arrays for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft Aug. 28.

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...

A transporter moves NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, inside a payload fairing, to the Vertical Integration Facility at Launch Complex 41 where it will be hoisted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocke...

The orbit of MAVEN sometimes crosses the orbit of Phobos. This image shows the configuration of the two orbits in early December 2015, when MAVEN's Phobos observations were made.

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 illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars.

The dual Atlas V rocket engines roar to life on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41.