A NASA Mars orbiter launched in 2013 November that went intoorbit around Mars in 2014 September to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet and its interactions with solar radiation and the solar wind. MAVEN measures the current loss of Mars’s upper atmosphere to space in an attempt to estimate how much of the planet’s atmosphere has been lost over time, which in turn has caused long-term changes to the planet’s climate.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html Official mission website.

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/ Mission page at University of Colorado.