NASA's Maven explorer arrives at Mars after year
CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA's Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late Sunday after a 442 million-mile (711 million kilometer) journey that began nearly a year ago. The robotic explorer fired its brakes and successfully slipped into orbit around the red planet, officials confirmed.
Now the real work begins for the $671 million mission, the first dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere. Flight controllers in Colorado will spend the next six weeks adjusting Maven's altitude and checking its science instruments. Then Maven will start probing the upper atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft will conduct its observations from orbit; it's not meant to land.
Scientists believe the Martian atmosphere holds clues as to how Earth's neighbor went from being warm and wet billions of years ago to cold and dry. That early wet world may have harbored microbial life, a tantalizing question yet to be answered.
