NASA's Newest Spacecraft Aims to Find Out

MAVEN will try to decipher the history of Mars' atmosphere and how it was lost.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — In their infancy, maybe even into their adolescence, Earth and Mars were more alike than they were different. Each rocky world was pockmarked by volcanoes, and waterways carved both surfaces. Atmospheres blanketed both planets, and each harbors rocks that could only have formed in lakes or oceans. Four billion years ago, alien visitors standing on each planet’s surface might have looked up and beheld an identical blue sky.
But like any siblings, the two planets changed as they grew older. Earth’s liquid iron core creates a magnetic field, which protects the planet from blistering solar rays. Somehow, Mars’ geomagnetic dynamo died. Earth, the bigger planet, held onto its atmosphere; little Mars, with only 38 percent of Earth’s gravity, saw its air stripped away. Earth kept its oceans and its water cycle, and Mars became the dusty, dry and dead world we know today.
How this happened — and why it happened to Mars, and not us — is the biggest unexplored question on the Red Planet. Answering it will shed light on Mars' history — and how long it may have been a hospitable home for life. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Explorer (MAVEN) will launch as soon as Monday to find out.

Buttoned Up and Go for Launch

Before it can answer any questions, MAVEN has to get to Mars — a huge challenge even if you don’t count the 10-month journey between the two planets. About five years in the making, MAVEN was designed and built in Colorado, and a C-17 cargo plane finally brought it to Kennedy Space Center Aug. 2. Scientists and engineers spent the next three months filling it with rocket fuel, installing explosive charges so it can free itself from its launch casing, and making sure everything works like it should.
MAVEN was already buttoned up in its rocket fairing when I visited it earlier this month, while it was still in a cleanroom at Kennedy’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. Workers wearing white bunny suits stepped around a bulky white hose, which snaked into the cone-topped cylinder to deliver filtered, refrigerated air. Inside, MAVEN’s solar panels were folded tight against its 8-foot cube body.

While most of us think of space as frigid, the warmth of launch and the sun can actually be a bigger problem, explained Jim Morrissey, MAVEN’s instrument systems manager. Keeping MAVEN air-conditioned gives it more time to warm up after it blows away its protective fairing.
After it passed several crucial instrument tests, MAVEN was attached to its Atlas V rocket and made its way to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, down the road from KSC. It’s a different facility than the one that launched the space shuttles for 30 years. Last week, while most of the eastern seaboard slept, a crew drove the rocket 5 mph the roughly 15 miles to the launch pad, arriving just before 3 a.m.
As of Nov. 14, everything looks good and launch is a 60 percent “go” — at this point, the only hiccup will probably be the weather, which might be cloudy and rainy. The team only has 20 days it can try to launch, and two-hour daily windows open for the first time at 1:28 p.m. eastern time Nov. 18. Timing is so crucial that MAVEN’s team got a special exception to keep working during the 17-day government shutdown last month.