The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is about to leave Jefferson County and head to Cape Canaveral where it will be hurled toward Mars in November on a mission largely devised and developed on Colorado soil.

MAVEN was open for viewing for the last time in its home state on Monday at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. It is set to be disassembled and shipped to Florida’s coast on Aug. 2. There it will spent 3-½ months being prepped for launch.

The project is NASA’s first mission to the red planet since the headline-grabbing Mars Curiosity Rover made its harrowing landing on its surface nearly a year ago, producing public enthusiasm that MAVEN’s program leaders hope to harness.

“We are still trying to get 10,000 people to this launch,” said Lisa May, program executive for the Mars program at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “The science follows on, part and parcel to what we are doing on Curiosity.”

The mission is not a lander but an orbiter and is the first mission ever devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. MAVEN’s ultimate goal is to determine the impact that the loss of atmospheric gas has had on climate change.

“We are trying to understand the history of our planets and the world around us. And, really, we are trying to understand what it means to be human,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’S principal investigator from CU-Boulder.

Jakosky has been working on the science of this mission for 10 years. While parallels are often drawn between Mars and Earth, he cautions against comparison when it comes to the mission’s purpose.

“What we are not doing is studying Mars to understand Earth,” Jakosky said.

The project’s estimated cost is $453 million with about $300 million expected to flow directly into the state because of MAVEN. NASA’s Mars program executive, May, praised the team for being on-time and on-budget, both of which are increasingly important in a budget-constrained environment.

For MAVEN, timeliness is key. Its launch window opens on November 18 and lasts for only 20 days. If the spacecraft was not ready, it would have to wait two years before the planets were aligned and close enough to make the journey.

Out of the project’s purse, $50 million has gone directly to CU.

“It’s the whopper of all contracts. It’s the biggest (we’ve ever received),” said Russell Moore, Provost at CU-Boulder. “Aside from the science, which is spectacular, there’s a really strong ethos of undergraduate engagement at LASP.”

LASP, which stands for Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is housed at CU-Boulder and will serve as the hub for all science operations on MAVEN. Meanwhile, just down the road near Littleton, Lockheed will man the spacecraft for its life cycle.

“It’s an interesting and exciting example of an industry-academia partnership,” Jakosky said.

Lockheed is building off a strong Mars legacy, with this being its fourth orbiter for the Martian atmosphere. The company’s Jefferson County facility has had the equivalent of 210 full time employees working on the spacecraft at the peak of activity.

“We love Mars. We have people who work here just because they have the chance to work on Mars missions,” said Guy Beutelschies, MAVEN spacecraft program manager at Lockheed Martin. “We are hopeful that we get to work on the next Mars lander in 2020.”

Beutelschies worked on the Mars Pathfinder, which was a lander, and the Mars Global Surveyor, an orbiter. The two missions launched only one month apart.

“The lander got all the press while the orbiter was doing some really amazing science,” Beutelschies said. “I hope they aren’t competing this time but are complementary. This spacecraft is going to help Curiosity out on its mission goals.”

But Beutelschies hopes that this time, there is enough of a gap between the two launches to help theirs get more attention.

In addition to Lockheed Martin and CU-Boulder, the mission’s Colorado connections include Centennial-based United Launch Alliance, which is providing the Atlas V launch vehicle and numerous other Colorado companies that are subcontractors to Lockheed on the program, such as SEAKR Engineering and Red Canyon Engineering and Software.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is managing the project and providing two of the on-board science instruments, the University of California at Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory is providing four science instruments for the mission and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is , providing navigation support, the Deep Space Network and the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations needed to communicate with the spacecraft.

Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638, kpainter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kristenpainter