This illustration depicts charged particles from a solar storm stripping away charged particles of Mars' atmosphere, one of the processes of Martian atmosphere loss studied by NASA's MAVEN mission, beginning in 2014. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a global magnetic field that could deflect charged particles emanating from the Sun.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, where the mission's IUVS team is also based. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built and operates the spacecraft.

For more information about MAVEN, visit http://www.nasa.gov/maven and http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/.