MAVEN

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution

Mission Profile

MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) is a NASA Mars orbiter launched on 18 November 2013 aboard an Atlas V 401 to investigate how the Martian atmosphere has been lost to space over billions of years, addressing the central question of why Mars transformed from a warm, wet world to the cold, dry desert it is today. Arriving at Mars in September 2014, MAVEN's suite of plasma physics and atmospheric instruments measures the rate at which solar wind strips the upper atmosphere, finding that Mars loses approximately 100 grams of atmosphere to space every second. The mission conclusively demonstrated that solar wind stripping over billions of years, combined with the loss of Mars's global magnetic field, was responsible for the thinning of the Martian atmosphere and the loss of surface liquid water. MAVEN also serves as a communications relay for surface missions and continues operating more than a decade after launch.