NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft began orbiting Mars on a mission to study how the Red Planet’s climate changed over time from warm and wet to cold and dry.
“Based on observed navigation data, congratulations. MAVEN is now in orbit,” said Dave Folta of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The unmanned orbiter has traveled more than 10 months and 711 million kilometers to reach Mars on Sunday for a first-of-its kind study of the planet’s upper atmosphere.
The data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft aims to help scientists understand what happened to the water on Mars and the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere several billion years ago.
How Mars lost its atmosphere is one of science’s biggest mysteries. The answers could shed light on the planet’s potential to support life — even if that was just microbial life — long ago.
MAVEN’s findings are also expected to help add to knowledge of how humans could survive on a future visit to the Red Planet, perhaps as early as 2030. “Mars is a cool place, but there is not much atmosphere,” said John Clarke, of the MAVEN science team.
“It is very cold, it is well below zero. The atmosphere is about half a percent of what we are breathing,” he added.