MAVEN successfully launches from Florida

NASA’s CU-Boulder-led mission to Mars begins ‘perfectly’
By Staff
NASA’s Mars mission

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches Monday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41. The CU-Boulder-led mission is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. (Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls)


K-12 Boulder Valley and Aurora Public Schools students participate in educational activities during the MAVEN launch party, held in the UMC Ballroom on the CU-Boulder campus. (Photo: Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado)

A $671 million NASA mission to Mars led by the University of Colorado Boulder thundered into the sky Monday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 11:28 p.m. MST, the first step on its 10-month journey to the red planet.





NASA selected the MAVEN mission for flight in 2008. Scientists think Mars was much more Earth-like roughly 4 billion years ago, and want to know how the climate changed, where the water went and what happened to the atmosphere, said Jakosky, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geological sciences department.




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