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Voice Off Screen: The evolution of Mars from a warm and wet planet to the cold and

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dry desert we see today is one of our solar system's

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biggest secrets. The NASA MAVEN mission is returning new results

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that are shedding a little bit of light on the secret, and here to tell us more

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about those results from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt

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Maryland is NASA Goddard's Chief Scientist Dr. Jim Garvin.

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Thank you so much for joining us today.

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Jim: Well thanks for having me.

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Voice Off Screen: MAVEN is returning some exciting results on the martian atmosphere, what are we seeing?

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Jim Garvin: Well MAVEN is giving us a new insight into how that

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wonderful Mars of the past; warm, wet, hospitable

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has gone from that state to its present dry cold foreboding state.

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By measuring how Mars interacts with the energy

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from the Sun, this solar wind, this streaming set of invisible particles

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we're watching how its atmosphere is losing parts of itself

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and if you play that tape backwards we can start to fill in the puzzle pieces

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on that ancient warm wet Mars and that dry foreboding desert Mars of today

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Voice Off Screen: Wow, so what role does atmospheric loss

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play in Mars' ability to support life?

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Garvin: Life is all about environments. Habitable envrionments, warm, wet, fuzzy,

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energy, all that great stuff. The Mars of today is not like that

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the Mars of the past we believe was warm, wet, and even habitable. But how

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did the Mars of the past through climate change go to the Mars of today which is

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dry desert like... almost impossible to imagine it being alive

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as we presently understand that. MAVEN is filling in the gaps, by measuring

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atmospheric loss today and the real Mars, the Mars that's living and breathing

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in our solar system and giving us a position on how

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it got from today, back in time. And that magical

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if you will, time machine tour is what we need to understand how planets evolve.

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Voice Off Screen: Interesting. So what is MAVEN telling us about the impact

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of the Sun on the martian climate?

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So Mars is different from Earth, and

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martian climate today of course is very non earth like, and so we now realize

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the interactions of Mars with the Sun and especially its atmosphere as

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its being peeled away to space is critical in the Mars of today

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and how it got to be that way. We think that will help us connect Mars back

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in time as the sun was more active, there were more energetic events

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that may have helped to accelerate the loss of atmosphere over time and MAVEN is giving us

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the here and now today which we need to run the tape backwards.

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Voice Off Screen: Now a recent NASA discovery has actually found water on Mars

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surface, how do MAVEN's results help us understand what's happened

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to water on the planet?

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Jim: Well MAVEN is all about the big picture Mars with

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water and loss of water and carbon dioxide from space

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in interactions with the sun. We also know at very local scales

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there's the expression we think of modern water, small trickles,

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and we're observing that with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. But the big picture

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is how that water in the atmosphere and the small amount that's exchanged from within the

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ground is lost to space and MAVEN is measuring that, its the big picture.

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We need to know that to go to Mars.

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Voice Off Screen: Where can we go to learn more about MAVEN and NASA's future with Mars?

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Jim: Well, one can go to www.nasa.gov/maven we

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have fantastic animations that show what MAVEN is measuring. Things

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that our eyes don't see that we can now see through these wonderful animations.

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And lots of other links to places that describe our Mars program. This program of

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exploring our brotherly planet.

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Voice Off Screen: Great, Dr. Jim Garvin thank you for joining us.

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Jim: Thanks a lot for having me.