NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has begun its historic journey to Mars.
MAVEN or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN was launched on Monday, November 18 at 1:28pm ET from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The spacecraft follows close on the heels of the Mars Orbiter launched by ISRO recently.
On November 5, Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) launched its Mars Orbiter, which is the first inter-planetary expedition for the country.
Paul Mahaffy, who is a NASA research scientist and was involved with both Curiosity Rover and MAVEN is hopeful that the spacecraft's launch will go as intended.
"As far as I know, all the testing leading up to the point has been going swimmingly," Mahaffy said. "My expectation is that if there is a launch delay, it'll have more to do with cloudiness and weather."
MAVEN is set to drift above the upper layers of Mars' atmosphere, but it will not join the Curiosity Rover on the Martian surface. However, MAVEN will help the rover in analyzing how the atmosphere of Mars has evolved and altered over billions of years.
"We want to better understand how the atmosphere is escaping from Mars," said Mahaffy. "Then, we can extrapolate back in time and ask, 'Was Mars' climate substantially different than it is today?'"
While MAVEN is airborne and the Curiosity Rover moves along the ground, both the spacecrafts may be able to communicate with each other, per scientists.
"Every time we send an orbiter, we put in telecommunications capability," noted Mahaffy. "It can talk to the surface rover, whether we need it to or not."
MAVEN is expected to begin orbiting Mars by September 22, 2014. The spacecraft has an elliptical not circular orbit and will be more than 2,700 miles away from Mars' surface at its furthest point and 93 miles at the closest point. MAVEN is also expected to temporarily dip down to 77 miles Mars' surface before it returns to its orbit.
