On November 13th, NASA's Goddard Conceptual Image Lab released a video of what they think Mars may have been like when it was a young planet. Theanimation, one of the most complex the team has ever produced, begins 4 billion years ago and depicts a planet that looks similar to ours, complete with blue skies and clouds. Then, as the years go by, the lakes dry up, clouds disappear and the sky transforms into the familiar dusty pink and tan, that we have all come to associate with Mars.
That is something the scientists are hoping to find out from the $671mm USD Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Spacecraft (MAVEN) that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, today (November 18th). MAVEN's mission is to orbit the Red Planet and gather enough data for scientists to reconstruct a history of its climate and try figure out how Mars lost its dense atmosphere and water and transformed into the dry icy planet it is today.
Resources: Dailymail.co.uk, livescience.com
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