NASA's Future Mission MAVEN in 2013

  The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), likely to provide answers bout Mars Climate History, which was scheduled for launch in late 2013, will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Mars upper atmosphere.
   The goal of MAVEN is to determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time.  Where did the atmosphere and the water gone?
   MAVEN will determine how much of the Mars atmosphere has been lost over time by measuring the current rate of escape to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes to allow extrapolation backward in time.