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Inteviewer:  So the evolution of Mars from a warm and wet planet to the cold

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and dry desert we see today is one of our solar system's

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biggest secrets.

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Thanks to NASA's MAVEN mission studying the martian atmosphere 

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we are now shedding a little bit of light on that secret.

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And here to tell us more about it from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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in Greenbelt, Maryland is MAVEN's Principal Investigator Dr. Bruce Jakosky.

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Interviewer:  Thank you for joining us.

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Bruce:  Thank you

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Interviewer: So MAVEN is returning some exciting results on the martian atmosphere

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What are we seeing?

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Bruce:  The MAVEN mission is all about learning the history

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of the Mars invironment.  We have a lot of evidence from previous

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missions that ancient Mars was warmer

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wetter place then the cold dry desert planet we see today.

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And we want to understand the driver behind that.

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To what extent has the atmosphere been lost out the top

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to space, stripped away by the solar wind?

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Interviewer:  Now what role does atmospheric lose actually play

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in Mar's ability to support life?

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Bruce:  With the solar wind being able to strip away the atmosphere.

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We have the ability to go from a planet capable of

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supporting life with liquid water at the surface

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early in it's history as the atmosphere disappeared

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and the planet got colder.

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LIquid water would have become more scarce

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more rare and eventually disappeared essentially entirely.

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Mar's would have gone from a planet capable of supporting

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life at the surface to one that really isn't able to support life today.

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Interviewer:  Wow fascinating.

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So what is MAVEN telling us about the impact of the sun on the martian climate?

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Bruce:  We hadn't really expected that the sun would be able to affect the

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geology, the atmosphere, and climate.

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So we are seeing the lose of the atmosphere is driven by the sun

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by the solar wind, by solar ultraviolet radiation, by solar storm events.

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And over time these are capable of stripping away a large amount of atmospheric gas

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and changing the climate.

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Interviewer:  So a NASA discovery recently has found water on Mar's surface.

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How do MAVEN's results help us understand  what is actually happened to water on the planet?

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Bruce:  The processes that we're exploring really operate over billions of years

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so we are looking at the long term evolution of the climate, evolution of the atmosphere.

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Some of the recent results about liquid water on the surface tell us

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about trace amounts of liquid that might me present today

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as a transient rather then something that is stable.

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Together their telling us about the overall history 

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of liquid water, the history of the atmosphere as a whole.

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Interviewer:  Where can we go to learn more about MAVEN

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and NASA's future with Mars?

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Bruce:  You can go to nasa.gov/maven 

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and there you will find some of the recent results

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along with some really cool videos showing how they operate.

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