NASA celebrates Mars Orbiter anniversary MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution). Ten years ago, on September 21, 2014, the spacecraft entered orbit around Mars and began studying the upper layers of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

The mission provided a wealth of data on how the Martian atmosphere responds to the Sun and solar wind, and how these interactions may explain the loss of the Martian atmosphere to space.

The management emphasised that:

During its first 10 years on Mars, MAVEN helped explain how the Red Planet transformed from a hot, wet world to the cold, dry world we see today.

Now MAVEN continues to make new discoveries about the Red Planet that expand knowledge of how the evolution of the atmosphere affects the Martian climate.

“These are the most promising results,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator and research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

This is an incredibly exciting time for the MAVEN team as we celebrate 10 years of Mars science and see how much impact this mission has had on the ground. We look forward to the discoveries that MAVEN will bring in the future.