The MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) space probe, launched on November 18, 2013, successfully entered Mars orbit a few hours ago. The spacecraft thrusters performed a 33-minute burn to slow it down to the right speed to get into an elliptical orbit with a period of 35 hours.

Now a period of six weeks starts in which MAVEN will be programmed for further orbital correction maneuvers and to test its instruments. Subsequently, it will begin its primary mission to study the Martian atmosphere.

The measurements of the composition, structure, and escape into space of the gases present in Mars’s atmosphere will help to understand the reasons for its transformation along with its interaction with the solar wind. When it was young, the red planet was much more like Earth but in time it’s become the desert we see today. Discovering the reasons for this huge change will help us understand the possible evolution of a planet.

However, the first mission for MAVEN will be completely different. That’s because on October 19, 2014, the comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring is expected to pass very close to Mars. When it was discovered at the beginning of 2013 a small chance was estimated that it might crash on the planet. After a few months of observations, it became clear that it would miss Mars.

The flyby of the comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will be observed by the space probes in orbit and the Mars Rovers Curiosity and Opportunity on the Martian surface. It’s a stroke of luck that the MAVEN spacecraft has arrived just in time to participate in the observations.

Professor Bruce Jakosky, the principal investigator of the mission, said that MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument is ideal for this job. It will allow performing spectroscopic analyses of the comet’s tail that will allow obtaining important information on its composition.

The MAVEN spacecraft will also be used as a radio relay between the rovers on Mars and their control centers on Earth. In this task, it will work alongside two other NASA probes that are older and therefore have limited reliability: the Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), launched in 2005.