Tuesday Afternoon Diversion: NASA's MAVEN Lifts Off For Mars

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 19, 2013 9:00PM

Remember when we would watch space shuttle launches in high school and how that started to fall out of favor beginning with the explosion of the Challenger in 1986? We're trying to bring back that spirit today.

NASA on Monday launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft to study the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet. The spacecraft is expected to reach Mars in 10-months.

"We expect to learn how the modern Mars works, really in detail. To see its climate state, to understand how the atmosphere is lost to space -- how Mars may have lost a magnetic field -- to take that information and map it back in time," said NASA's James Garvin.