MAVEN

Have you ever just watched the last five minutes of a movie and tried to piece the rest of it together, backwards?

Crazy idea, right?  It’s one that Mars scientists are doing on the MAVEN mission.

MAVEN stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN and the goal is to try and figure out what happened to Mars’ atmosphere millions of years ago.

Scientists know Mars at one time resembled Earth, with an atmosphere and flowing water.  With MAVEN, they will attempt to work backwards and find out how the atmosphere and dynamo was lost.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into the MAVEN Ambassador Class of 2015 and I attended a week-long workshop with 29 other teachers to find out more about this cool mission.   Continue reading