>>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. [beep beep... beep beep... beep beep...] [beep beep... beep beep...]