"Mars Gets Ready for Another Visitor"

Mars gets ready for another visitor.

 “Maven is not designed to land; rather, it will study Mars’ upper atmosphere from orbit”

NASA’s director of planetary science,

Jim Green.

           Launched in November 2013 and after 10 months and 442 miles (711 million kilometers), the NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) approaches Mars on September 21th, 2014. This Maven spacecraft could solve mystery of Mars's missing water. Different from 2012 Curiosity Rover, it will not land on the surface but it will be more important than other missions.

         The scientific’s goal this time is to use MAVEN data to determine and learn how Mars went from a warm, wet world that may have had microbial life during its first billion years to the cold, dry place of today, and allowing to make full sense of Curiosity’s individual discoveries. MAVEN should be able to help scientists understand about Mars’ atmosphere and climate, liquid water, and planetary habitability. MAVEN would help scientists answer the question: How the radical climate affected the planet? Further, MAVEN would help them understand if the water seeped down into the interior, or it was driven into space.

          With MAVEN, scientists at NASA expect to discover things they haven’t been able to ascertain in the past decades. It's NASA's 21st mission to Mars since the 1960s. There are three spacecraft now circling mars, one European and two Americans, in addition there are two NASA rovers exploring the surface.

         To go to Mars is not like going to another country in our planet, it is a big step for mankind. The planetary scientists are tracing the pathway for humans to be able to land and explore safely on Mars, and to understand everything about this planet; eventually humans will be capable to land not only in Mars, but also on other planets

CHEM1045 Honors Project Fall 2014:

Engineering Team: Stephany Cerezo, Anabel Alvarez Seivane and Milaidys Boffil.