Month: October 2013

Hello from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where the MAVEN spacecraft is undergoing careful preparations at the hands of engineers and technicians ahead of its launch to study the upper atmosphere and history of Mars. Adjacent to Kennedy, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, teams are readying a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket which will lift the MAVEN spacecraft off Earth and send it on a 10-month flight to the Red Planet. MAVEN will orbit Mars, not land on it, and collect data about the upper atmosphere of our closest planetary neighbor in unprecedented detail.

Launch is planned for Nov. 18 at 1:28 p.m. EST. We will provide a minute-by-minute account of the procedures on launch day from Hangar AE as the launch and mission teams get ready to begin this exciting mission!

We will cover the processing of MAVEN and its Atlas V launch vehicle and you can get more in-depth information about MAVEN here and about NASA’s Mars exploration program here.