>>INTERVIEWER: Last November, NASA launched a new mission to Mars to investigate the mystery
of how it became the red planet and how it may have looked in the past.
Now, that mission is about to arrive, and here joining us from NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is Planetary Science
Division Director Dr. Jim Green. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Green.
>>JIM: Thank you very much, Claire. >>INTERVIEWER: After nearly a year-long journey, MAVEN is finally
arriving at Mars. Can you tell us about the MAVEN mission entering Mars'
atmosphere? >>JIM: Well this is an incredibly exciting time, as you say
in November of last year, we had a perfect launch for
MAVEN. The rocket was put on the exact trajectory
we needed. And now we're on Mars' doorstep.
And Sunday night, we'll skew it, we'll fire the rockets
After 33 minutes, we hope Mars' gravity will take
over and put MAVEN into orbit.
>>INTERVIEWER: And what will MAVEN do as it orbits Mars? >>JIM: Well MAVEN is designed
to look at the interaction of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere with the solar wind.
We believe the solar wind has been very extensive over
many billions of years and has perhaps stripped away
what we believe is the oceans and atmospheres, and made it
much more dry and arid like it is today.
>>INTERVIEWER: What else is NASA doing to better understand Mars, and what are
our plans for the future? >>JIM: Well in addition to MAVEN,
we're planning two other missions coming up. One is a
lander that will look at how active seismicly
Mars is. And the next one is in
2020. It's a rover similar to Curiosity.
>>INTERVIEWER: How does studying the red planet's evolution help us understand
the formation of other planets, including Earth? >>JIM: Well,
way in the past, Mars was much more Earth-like. And some sort
of climate change occurred, where it lost its water,
lost its atmosphere. And we want to understand those processes, because
what happened on Mars could happen here on Earth. And so
the study of terrestrial planets and their evolution is incredibly important
for us. >>INTERVIEWER: Where can we learn more?
>>JIM: To learn more, go to NASA.gov/MAVEN.
>>INTERVIEWER: Great, Dr. Green, thank you for joining us.
>>JIM: My pleasure, thank you Claire.
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