Mars 'Maven' mission blasts off

NASA's newest robotic explorer, Maven, rocketed toward Mars from Cape Canaveral on Monday on a quest to unravel the ancient mystery of how the red planet went from a warm, wet world in its first billion years to the cold, dry desert it is today.

The early Martian atmosphere was thick enough to hold water and possibly support microbial life. But much of that atmosphere may have been lost to space, eroded by the sun.

The $671 million Maven mission — short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, with a capital "N" in EvolutioN — will arrive next fall bearing eight science instruments after a journey of 440 million miles.

The spacecraft, at 5,410 pounds, weighs as much as an SUV. From solar wingtip to wingtip, it stretches 37.5 feet, about the length of a school bus.

The craft will spend an entire Earth year measuring atmospheric gases once it arrives in September. Maven is NASA's 21st mission to Mars since the 1960s, but it's the first one devoted to studying the the planet's upper atmosphere.

A question underlying all of NASA's Mars missions to date has been whether life could have started on what now seems to be a barren world.

"We don't have that answer yet, and that's all part of our quest for trying to answer, 'Are we alone in the universe?' in a much broader sense," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's science mission director.

Unlike the 2011-launched Curiosity rover — which remains on Mars — Maven will conduct its experiments from orbit around the planet.

Maven will dip as low as 78 miles above the Martian surface, sampling the atmosphere. The lopsided orbit will stretch as high as 3,864 miles.

Curiosity's odometer reads 2.6 miles after more than a year of roving the red planet. An astronaut could accomplish that distance in about a day on the Martian surface, Grunsfeld noted.

Grunsfeld, a former astronaut, said considerable technology is needed, however, before humans can fly to Mars. NASA aims to achieve that goal sometime in the 2030s.

Mars remains an intimidating target even for robotic craft, more than 50 years after the world's first shot at the red planet.

Fourteen of NASA's previous 20 missions to Mars have succeeded, beginning with the 1964-launched Mariner 4, a Martian flyby. That's a U.S. success rate of 70 percent. The U.S. hasn't logged a Mars failure since 1999. 

Still, no other country comes close the U.S.' success. Russia has a poor track record involving Mars, despite repeated attempts dating back to 1960.

India became the newest entrant into the study of Mars two weeks ago with its first-ever launch to the red planet. The Indian orbiter will try to answer some of the same questions Maven aims to investigate.

An estimated 10,000 NASA guests descended on Cape Canaveral for the afternoon liftoff of the unmanned Atlas V rocket carrying Maven, including a couple thousand from the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is leading the effort.

"We're just excited right now," said the university's Bruce Jakosky, principal scientist for Maven, "and hoping for the best."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press