NASA's Next Mars Mission Arrives at Kennedy Space Center for Launch Processing

A crane lifts NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility on Aug. 3, 2013, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft was flown to Kennedy Space Center for launch processing from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado near the Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton, Colo., where it was built. MAVEN is to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November, 2013 to begin a 10-month voyage to Mars. It is the first mission dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere and scientists hope to find traces of the ancient environment thought to have existed there. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs via NASA http://ift.tt/1bbZ5Bh