Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), U.S. spacecraft designed to study the upper atmosphere of Mars and specifically to determine how much gas Mars has lost to space during its history. Understanding the evolution of Mars’s atmosphere would allow the determination of how long Mars would have been hospitable to life in the past. MAVEN was launched by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 18, 2013, and arrived at Mars on September 21, 2014.

MAVEN carries three packages of instruments. One package studies the solar wind and its impact on Mars’s ionosphere. (Since Mars has no magnetic field, its atmosphere would be slowly removed by interaction with the solar wind.) The second package is an ultraviolet spectrometer that studies the upper atmosphere, and the third package is a mass spectrometer that studies the composition of the upper atmosphere. MAVEN found that Mars lost about 2/3 of its early atmosphere to space. When Mars lost its magnetic field as the planet cooled over 4 billion years, the solar wind was able to strip away Mars’s early Earthlike atmosphere. MAVEN orbits Mars every 3.5 hours and get as close as 150 km (90 miles) to its surface. The mission has enough fuel to last until 2030.