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NASA mission page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/
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NASA launches Maven orbiter to probe mysteries in Mars' air
NASA launched its Maven orbiter on Monday to begin a journey that could unravel the mysteries surrounding Mars' past and current atmosphere — and perhaps reveal how the planet lost its life-friendly environment.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket rose from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 in Florida at 1:28 p.m. ET, carrying the probe into space to kick off its $671 million mission.
"Hey, guys, we're going to Mars!" Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado who serves as Maven's principal investigator, declared afterward.
If all goes according to schedule, the bus-sized, 2.7-ton spacecraft will enter Martian orbit next September to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere over the course of at least one Earth year.
What happened on Mars?
"Maven" is an acronym that stands for Mars Atmophere and Volatile EvolutioN. The mission's objective is to help scientists figure out how the Red Planet's environment changed from a warm, moist place into the chilly wasteland it is today.
Previous missions — including NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been working on Red Planet's surface for more than a year — have found ample geological evidence that Mars had enough liquid water on its surface to be hospitable to life billions of years ago. That's not the case anymore.
"Something clearly happened," Jakosky said.
The leading hypothesis is that Mars was too small to hang onto its global magnetic field over the long term. As a result, the planet lost the kind of magnetic shield that protects Earth's atmosphere from the damaging effects of solar radiation. In this scenario, electrically charged particles from the sun stripped away Mars' air from the top, leaving behind a carbon dioxide atmosphere that's only 1 percent as dense as Earth's. That kind of atmosphere can't retain heat, shield the surface from radiation or sustain liquid water.
There are also hints that some of Mars' atmospheric CO2 was locked up as carbonates in the Red Planet's rocks. How much was stripped away from above, and how much was locked up below?
"We can't go back and study what happened over 4 billion years," Jakosky told reporters, "but we can go and look at how these processes are operating today, and how the processes have changed over time."
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NASA launched its Maven orbiter on Monday to begin a journey that could unravel the mysteries surrounding Mars' past and current atmosphere — and perhaps reveal how the planet lost its life-friendly environment.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket rose from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 in Florida at 1:28 p.m. ET, carrying the probe into space to kick off its $671 million mission.
"Hey, guys, we're going to Mars!" Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado who serves as Maven's principal investigator, declared afterward.
If all goes according to schedule, the bus-sized, 2.7-ton spacecraft will enter Martian orbit next September to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere over the course of at least one Earth year.
What happened on Mars?
"Maven" is an acronym that stands for Mars Atmophere and Volatile EvolutioN. The mission's objective is to help scientists figure out how the Red Planet's environment changed from a warm, moist place into the chilly wasteland it is today.
Previous missions — including NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been working on Red Planet's surface for more than a year — have found ample geological evidence that Mars had enough liquid water on its surface to be hospitable to life billions of years ago. That's not the case anymore.
"Something clearly happened," Jakosky said.
The leading hypothesis is that Mars was too small to hang onto its global magnetic field over the long term. As a result, the planet lost the kind of magnetic shield that protects Earth's atmosphere from the damaging effects of solar radiation. In this scenario, electrically charged particles from the sun stripped away Mars' air from the top, leaving behind a carbon dioxide atmosphere that's only 1 percent as dense as Earth's. That kind of atmosphere can't retain heat, shield the surface from radiation or sustain liquid water.
There are also hints that some of Mars' atmospheric CO2 was locked up as carbonates in the Red Planet's rocks. How much was stripped away from above, and how much was locked up below?
"We can't go back and study what happened over 4 billion years," Jakosky told reporters, "but we can go and look at how these processes are operating today, and how the processes have changed over time."
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