The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, launched in November 2013, will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. MAVEN will study the martian atmosphere, from close to the planet’s surface to high up in the outer reaches, to find out the rate of loss of water and other gases from the atmosphere today and to determine what the loss rate might have been in the past. Data from MAVEN will help scientists as they try to solve the mystery: what happened to the water on Mars?

This site is about SSL’s role in MAVEN; SSL is responsible for one of the three instrument suites that will be doing this detective work on MAVEN’s atmosphere. The main MAVEN site is at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric Physics (LASP).