NASA Shares What MAVEN Spacecraft Has Seen in its First Few Weeks at Mars

This image shows an artist concept of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission in orbit around Mars.

NASA will host a news teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 14, to announce early science results from its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission.

Launched in November 2013, the spacecraft entered orbit around Mars on Sept. 21 completing an interplanetary journey of 10 months and 442 million miles (711 million kilometers). MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere to help scientists understand climate change over the Red Planet's history.

The teleconference participants are:
-- Elsayed Talaat, MAVEN program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington
-- Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder)
-- Mike Chaffin, Remote Sensing Team member at CU-Boulder
-- Justin Deighan, Remote Sensing Team member at CU-Boulder
-- Davin Larson, Solar Energetic Particles instrument lead at the University of California, Berkeley