Targeting Mars

  • Released Thursday, September 4, 2014
View full credits

If you want to send a spacecraft from Earth to Mars, how would you get it there? You can't aim straight at the Red Planet, because it's moving around the Sun significantly slower than the Earth. Instead, you'll have to wait for up to 26 months for a launch window, then carefully aim at a moving target. In November, 2013, the controllers of NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft did just that. When MAVEN arrives, it will be the first spacecraft to study Mars's upper atmosphere in detail, helping scientists understand how Mars changed from a wet planet early in its history to the cold, dry world we see today.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is quickly approaching Mars on a mission to study its upper atmosphere. When it arrives on September 21, 2014, MAVEN's winding journey from Earth will culminate with a dramatic engine burn, pulling the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit.

For complete transcript, click here.

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, September 4, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:50 PM EDT.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes: