STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- MAVEN has arrived in Mars's orbit after traveling 442 million miles in the course of 10 months to get there.
What's it like to maneuver NASA's Curiosity rover?
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It won't land on the red
planet but instead study Mars' atmosphere from above to answer questions
about its climate change, NASA says.
NASA's MAVEN craft will
live up to its formal name -- the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution
craft -- by helping scientists figure out how ancient Mars changed so
dramatically into the planet we know today.
It is the first mission
devoted to studying the upper Martian atmosphere as a key to
understanding the history of Mars' climate, water and habitability.
"The evidence shows that
the Mars atmosphere today is a cold, dry environment, one where liquid
water really can't exist in a stable state," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN
principal investigator, during a mission preview briefing last week at
NASA headquarters in Washington. "But it also tells us when we look at
older surfaces, that the ancient surfaces had liquid water flowing over
it."
MAVEN to study Mars from above
Photos: Mars MAVEN mission
So where did the planet's water and carbon dioxide go?
Jakosky said MAVEN will
help unravel that mystery by using its scientific instruments to measure
the composition and escape of gases in the Martian atmosphere.
MAVEN is to study the top
of the atmosphere to determine the extent to which losing gas to space
might have been the driving mechanism behind climate change, Jakosky
said.
MAVEN has company out near Mars, man-made and otherwise.
India's first mission to
the Red Planet, the Mars Orbiter Mission, is set to arrive a few days
after MAVEN does. The director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Jim
Green, says the United States and India are interested in cooperating
as their crafts gather data about the planet.
There's a visitor of the cosmic kind, too.
Comet Sliding Spring, which was discovered last year, will be closest to Mars about four weeks after MAVEN arrives.
The comet is going to miss Mars by about 81,000 miles, said Jakosky.
"I'm told that the odds
of having an approach that close to Mars are about one-in-a-million
years," he said, adding that dust from the comet carries only a
"relatively minimal" risk to the spacecraft.
MAVEN will take advantage of the rare flyby by observing the comet itself, as well as its effect on the Martian atmosphere.
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