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>>INTERVIEWER: Last November, NASA launched a new mission to investigate the mystery of how

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it became the red planet, and how it may have looked in the past. Now that

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mission is about to arrive, and here joining us from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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in Greenbelt, Maryland is MAVEN Deputy Program Scientist Dr.

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Kelly Fast. Thank you for joining us. >>KELLY: Thank you. >>INTERVIEWER: After nearly

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a year-long journey, MAVEN is finally arriving at Mars. Tell us about the

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MAVEN mission entering Mars' atmosphere. >>KELLY: Well we're really excited because

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coming up here on Sunday, after launching last November,

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and a 10-month journey to Mars, MAVEN will finally be arriving

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at Mars coming up here on Sunday. We've got a really critical operation

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for MAVEN will be orienting itself and firing its rockets so that it can be

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captured into orbit around Mars. And after that white-knuckle

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period of time, MAVEN will settle into science

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operations and it will start studying the upper atmosphere of Mars.

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>>INTERVIEWER: What will MAVEN do as it orbits Mars?

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>>KELLY: Well MAVEN is the first mission that is designed to study Mars'

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upper atmosphere. And so MAVEN will deploy its instruments,

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that are uniquely designed for this mission, and it will make measurements

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of processes taking place in the upper atmosphere and its interaction with the Sun,

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things that lead to escape of the atmosphere, to try

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to determine what happened to Mars over time. Mars once

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was, appeared to be a warmer and wetter place with a thicker atmosphere,

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and it's not the case now. So MAVEN is going to try to answer some of those questions.

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>>INTERVIEWER: What else is NASA doing to try to better understand Mars, and what are our plans for

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the future? >>KELLY: Well, NASA has a vibrant program. We have the

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2016 launch of the InSight mission. which will

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land on Mars to study the interior. We have the 2020 rover which will be

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launched and rove Mars and make further measurements.

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And, MAVEN is part of that whole program of current missions

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and future missions that will try to characterize Mars from

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the surface out to space as part of that Journey to Mars

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to one day send future missions and humans to Mars

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one day. >>INTERVIEWER: How does studying the red planet's evolution help us

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understand the formation of other planets, including Earth? >>KELLY: Well certainly

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we look at Mars, and from all the evidence from all the other missions

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that have gone to Mars, that all these signs that Mars was a warmer

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and wetter place with a thicker atmosphere, and so if you had a planet that

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once perhaps looked more Earth-like, you want to answer those

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questions about what did happen to the planet. And so MAVEN will be looking at

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those processes in the upper atmosphere that take place that lead to escape

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of the atmosphere, to try to track that back through time to figure happened to Mars.

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>>INTERVIEWER: Sounds good, where can we learn more? >>KELLY: Well you can

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go to NASA.gov/MAVEN and you can find out

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lots of information about the MAVEN mission, animations, and

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images and such, but also links to social media so that you can go

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into orbit at Mars with us and you can find out more about the mission

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as the mission takes place. So come join us. >>INTERVIEWER: Dr. Kelly

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Fast, thank you for joining us. >>KELLY: Thank you.

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