All set to launch the mission aims to find out how ... - The Vanguard

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Mars
• That was before his dramatic climate change

Washington. (EFE). – The U.S. space agency is all set to ignite, Monday morning, an Atlas 5 rocket to launch the capsule MAVEN , on a mission to discover how Mars lost its atmosphere .

NASA meteorologists said today that there is a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions for the release from the Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA), scheduled for the 18.28 GMT on Monday.

MAVEN

capsule, corresponding to name stands for Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution of Mars and is the word for “one who has much knowledge,” be ten spatial month voyage to reach its orbit of Mars.

conducive to the launch period extends from tomorrow until December 7, with a possible extension until the 15th of next month. If it could carry out the launch within this period, MAVEN must wait twenty-six months to give proper alignment of Earth and Mars.

Billions of years ago, astronomers, Mars was warm planet with a dense atmosphere and large volumes of water on the surface. The rover Curiosity of NASA found this year on the Martian surface a place that could have supported microbial life in the past. Over the millennia, Mars lost most of its atmosphere and has become a planet where the atmosphere has a density equivalent to only 1 percent of the land that has the.

Scientists hope

MAVEN, a mission of 671 million, can solve this mystery. To this end, in March 2014 MAVEN initiate an elliptical orbit that dance sometimes placed within 150 miles of the Martian surface and, on other occasions, about 6,000 kilometers.

NASA scientists explained that in the course of a year, MAVEN will use its eight instruments to study the Martian upper atmosphere and solar wind, the stream of charged solar particles that this planet has been stripped of most part of its atmosphere.

also play an additional mission MAVEN serving as a relay station for communications between NASA Earth and its two Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. Until now these functions have carried out the Mars Odyssey satellite, launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005. Both satellites, NASA, enjoy good health and continue to function well, so MAVEN, at least during its first year in orbit, will be considered as an alternate.