MAVEN Shipping to NASA Kennedy [HD]

Lockheed Martin shipped NASA's MAVEN spacecraft to the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on Friday, Aug. 2. The 1,784-pound spacecraft was shipped on a U.S. Air Force transport plane in an environmentally controlled container. The plane, MAVEN and support personnel took off from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo. and touched down at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility, on one of the largest runways in the world.

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Curiosity and MAVEN Explore Mars

This animation first shows Curiosity working to understand Mars as a past habitat, with a cut to MAVEN arriving at Mars to study the upper Martian atmosphere. Curiosity will not be able to "see" MAVEN on its arrival. Later in the mission, Curiosity may be able to view MAVEN when its orbit passes over Gale Crater at dusk, similar to viewing a low-earth-orbiting (LEO) satellite around Earth. As a precedent, Mars rover Spirit captured the Mars Odyssey orbiter as a bright point in the Martian sky.

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MAVEN is on the way on This Week @NASA.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a 10-month journey to Mars. MAVEN will take critical measurements of the Martian upper atmosphere to investigate how loss of the atmosphere to space impacted the history of water on the planet's surface. Also, Happy anniversary, ISS!, Asteroid Ideas, LADEE in science orbit, Orion progress, Rocket autopilot test, Commercial crew, and more!

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