NASA On Air: NASA's MAVEN Mission To Explore Mars Atmosphere (3/13/2014)
LEAD: NASA’s MAVEN satellite is still on track flying to Mars to help answer questions about why our sister planet is so much different than Earth.
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Four billion years ago, Mars may have looked like Earth.
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But where did Mars's water and atmosphere go?
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Earth's powerful magnetic field protects us from the solar wind.
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On Mars there is NO north-south magnetic field to deflect solar energy. Scientists suspect the Martian atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind.
TAG: MAVEN is traveling at 65,000 miles an hour, taking 10 months before arriving at Mars in September 2014.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Producer
- Howard Joe Witte (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
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Project support
- Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Release date
This page was originally published on Thursday, March 13, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.