Nasa Maven Mission

[ultramol]

I see nasa are about to launch today a mission to mars to look into why it lost its atmosphere. Could have implications for us on our rock !

[Tinker1947]

I thought Mars lost its atmosphere due to its size, not enough gravity to hold it, sure its been talked about in the passed, a mission to another planet would have made more sense, seeing as there strapped for cash....

[Matt Scunthorpe]

I thought it was due to its size too.

On another note, i wish nasa/esa would go somewhere other than Mars now, i do love the rovers but there are alot of them on there now and they all seem to go there to look for life/past life and not find anything, with much more interesting worlds to visit, such as Titan it would be good to see something visit/roam there again.

Matt.

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[ultramol]

For the money spent I think bigger and better telescopes in space would be of more use....

[Cath]

You can watch the launch live today (Mon 18 Nov 2013) from 4pm (UK) on NASA TV ..

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream/

I hope it goes well !

Could have implications for us on our rock !

I'm sure our atmosphere is going to be just fine for a good few millions of years to come, unless of coarse we do our bestist to mess with it.

[Mad Taff]

I agree that a mission somewhere else would be better such as Titan or Europa. This mission to Mars is a bit weak in what its setting out to do. Mars is still an intersting place but perhaps they should move on and look at a 'sample return' type mission now.

[Cath]

I agree they could do better.

For a start, to not continue with developing a better much safer way to get into space and back is not very imaginative/innovative of them, they started to show some innovation with the space shuttle but that has long since been scrapped. Virgin has the right idea, it's time NASA invested in some new innovation and joined in, a modern day space plane would be a far far better method than strapping a rocket to your back, and far cheaper to run once it's developed.

Seeing all that hardware going up only to return in a fireball seems so very wasteful, not just in materials but in all that time spent building it in the first place.

[Kropster]

Mars lost its atmosphere mostly because it lost its magnetic field.... this allows the solar wind to 'blow away' the atmosphere,

Earth's atmosphere is protected by the magnetic field that deflects the solar wind.

[Ptarmigan]

Mars lost its atmosphere mostly because it lost its magnetic field..

Yes, that is what I understood previously,

not because of gravity, , ,

it was too small to stay warm, core cooled, dynamo froze, no magnetic field, no magnetic bubble, atmosphere blew away in the solar wind , , ,

so whadu I know ??

what did I miss in the reasons for this new mission ?

[mdstuart]

So is it going to orbit earth for a bit first? Can we see it? It's not on heavens above.

Mark