>>INTERVIEWER: Last November, NASA launched a new mission 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 MAVEN Deputy Program Scientist Dr.
Kelly Fast. Thank you for joining us. >>KELLY: Thank you. >>INTERVIEWER: After nearly
a year-long journey, MAVEN is finally arriving at Mars. Tell us about the
MAVEN mission entering Mars' atmosphere. >>KELLY: Well we're really excited because
coming up here on Sunday, after launching last November,
and a 10-month journey to Mars, MAVEN will finally be arriving
at Mars coming up here on Sunday. We've got a really critical operation
for MAVEN will be orienting itself and firing its rockets so that it can be
captured into orbit around Mars. And after that white-knuckle
period of time, MAVEN will settle into science
operations and it will start studying the upper atmosphere of Mars.
>>INTERVIEWER: What will MAVEN do as it orbits Mars?
>>KELLY: Well MAVEN is the first mission that is designed to study Mars'
upper atmosphere. And so MAVEN will deploy its instruments,
that are uniquely designed for this mission, and it will make measurements
of processes taking place in the upper atmosphere and its interaction with the Sun,
things that lead to escape of the atmosphere, to try
to determine what happened to Mars over time. Mars once
was, appeared to be a warmer and wetter place with a thicker atmosphere,
and it's not the case now. So MAVEN is going to try to answer some of those questions.
>>INTERVIEWER: What else is NASA doing to try to better understand Mars, and what are our plans for
the future? >>KELLY: Well, NASA has a vibrant program. We have the
2016 launch of the InSight mission. which will
land on Mars to study the interior. We have the 2020 rover which will be
launched and rove Mars and make further measurements.
And, MAVEN is part of that whole program of current missions
and future missions that will try to characterize Mars from
the surface out to space as part of that Journey to Mars
to one day send future missions and humans to Mars
one day. >>INTERVIEWER: How does studying the red planet's evolution help us
understand the formation of other planets, including Earth? >>KELLY: Well certainly
we look at Mars, and from all the evidence from all the other missions
that have gone to Mars, that all these signs that Mars was a warmer
and wetter place with a thicker atmosphere, and so if you had a planet that
once perhaps looked more Earth-like, you want to answer those
questions about what did happen to the planet. And so MAVEN will be looking at
those processes in the upper atmosphere that take place that lead to escape
of the atmosphere, to try to track that back through time to figure happened to Mars.
>>INTERVIEWER: Sounds good, where can we learn more? >>KELLY: Well you can
go to NASA.gov/MAVEN and you can find out
lots of information about the MAVEN mission, animations, and
images and such, but also links to social media so that you can go
into orbit at Mars with us and you can find out more about the mission
as the mission takes place. So come join us. >>INTERVIEWER: Dr. Kelly
Fast, thank you for joining us. >>KELLY: Thank you.
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