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Visualization depicting NASA s own orbital motion, background stars rise and set behind the planet. Their light dims as it passes through the tenuous atmosphere, with specific gases absorbing specific wavelengths. MAVEN uses its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph to break apart this light and see which wavelengths are absorbed, allowing it to determine atmospheric composition at varying altitudes. || Print resolution still image - MAVEN in orbit around Mars || Print resolution still image - MAVEN studying the atmosphere of Mars || Print resolution still image - MAVEN studying the atmosphere of Mars

Principal Investigator Bruce Jakosky talks about MAVEN’s science observations at Mars.Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here. || High above the thin Martian skies, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft is carrying out a mission: determine how Mars lost its early atmosphere, and with it, its water. While previous Mars orbiters have peered down at the planet’s surface, MAVEN is spending part of its time gazing at the stars, looking for subtle changes in their color as they dip through the limb of Mars and set below the horizon. Such stellar occultations reveal what the atmosphere is made of, and how its composition varies with altitude. MAVEN’s observations are providing the most detailed picture of the Mars upper atmosphere to date, helping scientists understand how Mars turned from a warm and wet planet in its youth, into the forbidding desert that we see today. || MAVEN gazes at the setting stars during one of its stellar occultation campaigns. || MAVEN campaigns, MAVEN lowers its closest approach to only 125 km above Mars, dipping into the upper atmosphere to measure it in situ. || When water molecules are split apart in the Martian atmosphere, the resulting hydrogen atoms escape more easily from the planet than the heavier oxygen atoms. || Before MAVEN entered its final science-mapping orbit, it observed carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen at varying altitudes above Mars. The heavier carbon and oxygen atoms cling tightly to Mars, while hydrogen atoms extend far above the planet.

MAVEN observes a stellar occultation with its IUVS instrument. By splitting apart the light of setting stars, MAVEN can determine the composition of the Martian atmosphere. || NASA s own orbital motion, background stars rise and set behind the planet. Their light dims as it passes through the tenuous atmosphere, with specific gases absorbing specific wavelengths. MAVEN uses its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph to break apart this light and see which wavelengths are absorbed, allowing it to determine atmospheric composition at varying altitudes.