The MAVEN mission is designed to explore Mars’ upper atmosphere and its interactions with the Sun and solar wind. The goal of MAVEN is to understand the processes controlling the structure and composition of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars, to determine the escape rate of gas to space today, and to understand the processes controlling it. Data obtained from MAVEN will allow scientists to extrapolate backwards in time and determine the total atmospheric loss to space throughout Martian history. [...]
During this April 22, 2015 presentation at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, MAVEN principal investigator, Dr. Bruce Jakosky, discusses the mission and its early science results. [More at link]