Mars has long served as inspiration for some of the world’s best science fiction. Countless tales of martians — typically hostile green beings bent on conquering Earth — pervade our collective pop culture. But ask most people what facts they actually know about the Red Planet? Well, the easy answer is “not much.”

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution craft, or MAVEN, scheduled to enter orbit around Mars on Sunday night, may change all that.

MAVEN has traveled 442 million miles since its November launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The $671 million mission has deep Colorado roots: It was built in Littleton by Lockheed Martin Space Systems; Centennial-based United Launch Alliance provided the launch vehicle; mission operations are being handled at Lockheed’s Waterton Canyon facility in Jefferson County; and science operations are being led by University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

About $300 million of the project budget remained in Colorado, CU officials say.

LIVE BLOG: Updates of MAVEN arriving at Mars

What MAVEN is set to study could bring large discoveries in understanding the existence of life outside our solar system and beyond, explained MAVEN co-investigator David Brain

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“What excites me most is trying to figure out what the planet used to be in the past or what it’s going to be like in the future,” said Brain, who is also an assistant professor in CU’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department. “When you have really big questions like, ‘Where did we come from?’ and ‘Why is Earth the place that seems to be able to host life?’ you don’t always have really grand answers for those questions. Sometimes you make progress by picking a small, but really important, piece of the puzzle. So that’s what MAVEN is doing, in broad terms.”

Doing science

While in orbit, MAVEN will study Mars’ outer atmosphere in an attempt to understand the planet’s climate history. Scientists know there was once liquid water that flowed over Mars’ surface — for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years — but what happened to it? Scientists believe the atmospheric particles that provided the right environment either went down to the surface of the planet, or went up and escaped gravity into space.

“The interesting puzzle is that the atmosphere of Mars is incapable of supporting water in a liquid state at the surface for more than a few hours,” Brain said. “So, you can infer that Mars has changed, and the martian atmosphere has changed, and since liquid water is so crucial for life on Earth … it becomes really a compelling question to figure out how.”

There are nine main scientific instruments aboard MAVEN that fall into three categories. One set will measure the sun’s influences on the martian atmosphere in an attempt to determine the type of solar energy that gave the atmospheric particles enough juice to escape gravity. Another set will measure what Brain calls the “swimming pool” — the atmospheric particles at the upper atmospheric level that could escape at some point. (Fun fact: One of these instruments is referred to as a “particle sniffer.”)

The final category of instruments will measure the particles that are escaping the planet.

“There’s really a 10th instrument —the spacecraft itself,” Brain said. “We’re using how the spacecraft gets pushed around as a 10th set of science data to tell us something about the swimming pool of the atmosphere.”

As an added bonus, the MAVEN team will also be able to study Comet Siding Spring as it hurtles past Mars in October.

A nail-biter

On Sunday night, MAVEN will move off the trajectory that would send it whizzing past Mars and maneuver itself into orbiting around the planet.

“It’s easy-schmeasy, pizza pie, of course.” Brain joked.

Guy Beutelschies, Lockheed’s director of space exploration systems, serves as the program manager on the MAVEN project. His team, many of whom have served on previous NASA missions to Mars, have prepared for Sunday’s insertion by studying past failures, conducting tests of every possibly scenario, running hundreds of simulations and stress testing all of MAVEN’s components.

“The reason (orbit insertion) is a big event is you only get one shot,” Beutelschies said. “We really devote a lot of effort to making sure it all goes perfect the first time, because the first time is the only time.”

There will be no Earth-to-space ground control inserting MAVEN into Mars’ orbit Sunday.

“We’ve loaded all the instructions on board the spacecraft to monitor and execute the insertion,” Beutelschies explained. “If MAVEN sees problems, it has the smarts on board to take action to recover and readjust.”

Once MAVEN nears Mars, it will turn itself around, and the craft’s high-gain antenna will go offline. MAVEN’s computers will fire six thrusters for about 34 minutes to slow it down and capture it into orbit around Mars. If those computers malfunction, they can self-restart, recalculate the thruster fire time, and attempt the insertion.

“Once we’re there, it’s a lot more straightforward to change the spacecraft’s orbit to make it smaller so we can do our science,” Brain said. “As soon as that burn is over, and MAVEN sends the message ‘Hey, I’m here,’ … then the work of commanding starts immediately.”

After entering orbit, MAVEN’s instruments will be awakened, tested and deployed over about six weeks. Some will start taking observations. The official “start of science” is Nov. 8, 2014, and will go for one year, after which LASP can apply for more NASA funding to continue the work.

“I know that NASA headquarters is really happy with this team and how they approach problems and handle problems and all seem to pull together,” Brain said. “That got us to the launch pad on time, and I think that’s going to put us into orbit around Mars without any difficulty.”

Lockheed has been involved in every NASA Mars mission to date. This gives Beutelschies confidence in his team and the mission’s success.

“It’s like going to the big game: You practice, you’ve done everything you can, you’ve got the best team on the field, but you still have little butterflies,” he said. “It’s exciting.”

As for Brain? MAVEN is the first full spacecraft mission he’s worked on.

“It’s really thrilling to be a part of. I can’t believe I get to do this for my job,” he said. “Yeah … it’s really cool.”

Laura Keeney: 303-954-1337, lkeeney@denverpost.com or twitter.com/LauraKeeney

Want to watch?

The public is invited to a free orbit insertion watch party at 6:30 p.m Sunday at the University of Colorado at Boulder. You can also monitor MAVEN live through NASA Eyes, which is tracking the spacecraft’s journey.