MAVEN media day

NASA showcased the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft to news media inside a secure, contaminant-free clean room at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday.

MAVEN is set for launch Nov. 18 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, and engineers are completing final checks on the spacecraft before it is fueled with toxic hydrazine propellant, encapsulated inside the launcher's payload fairing and moved to the launch pad in early November.

MAVEN's solar panels extend 37.5 feet tip-to-tip, and the wings will soon be folded up before Lockheed Martin Corp. engineers put MAVEN through a spin balance test. Fueling should begin in late October, Lockheed Martin will hand over responsibility for the spacecraft to ULA on Nov. 1 to begin encapsulation and integration with the Atlas 5.

Launch of the $671 million mission is scheduled for Nov. 18 in a two-hour window opening at 1:28 p.m. EST (1828 GMT). MAVEN will insert itself into orbit around Mars on Sept. 22, 2014, beginning a one-year primary mission studying how the red planet's atmosphere has evolved from a warmer, wetter environment to the barren world of today.

Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now