NASA Launches Maven Rocket to Explore the Air on Mars

NASA launched its Maven rocket on Monday afternoon to travel to Mars and collect evidence of how the planet lost its life friendly environment. The mission, which cost NASA $671 million, began at 1:28 PM EST on Monday. Maven is a United Launch Atlas 5 rocket and weighs 2.7 tons, about the size of an American school bus. Maven, an acronym that stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, will enter Mars' orbit next September if everything goes according to plan.

Maven's mission is to find out what happened to make Mars the desolate wasteland that it is now. One theory is that Mars was too small to hang on its global magnetic field for the long term. This theory explains how Mars lost all of its magnetic protection over its atmosphere, therefore making the planet vulnerable to solar radiation. Burce Jakosky, a scientist at the University of Colorado, said, "We can't go back and study what happened over $4 billion years, but we can go and look at how these processes are operating today, and how the processes have changed over time."

Maven won't be working alone once it reaches Mars. NASA already has three other orbiters and two other surface rovers on Mars doing various research and collecting data. India recently launched a rocket that will be joining Maven on Mars at the end of next year as well.

Take a look at this informative video on Maven and all of its functions that it will be performing on the Red Planet. Also, be on the lookout for any updates about when Maven will land and start performing research about Mars' atmosphere!