The important mission of the new Mars probe

On November 18, NASA launched the unmanned space probe MAVEN into orbit around Mars to study why the Red Planet's atmosphere has become too cold and thin to hold liquid water.

Project officials said the MAVEN spacecraft was launched at 1:28 p.m. local time on November 18 (1:28 a.m. on November 19 in Vietnam) from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida (USA) on an Atlas V 401 rocket.

MAVEN's mission when entering Mars orbit is to fly around the Red Planet at an altitude of 6,000km and make five descents to an altitude of just 125km above the Martian surface.

With enough fuel to operate for nearly a decade, MAVEN will carry out many important research missions through the use of three sets of research instruments to analyze the characteristics of wind, sun and ionosphere in the Martian atmosphere, thereby determining the structure and properties of this atmosphere./.

According to VNA