Mars wasn't always the "Red Planet" we call it. Billions of years ago, it looked a lot like our own planet. NASA will launch the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft on Monday at 1:28pm ET in search for what happened to the planet.

When it reaches there, it will explore the planet's upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind. Will we be able to learn much from Mars and perhaps, avoid a similar fate?



"What happened to its atmosphere that enabled the sun to just come along and scrape [it] away? If there are things that we can do here on Earth that will prevent that, then we want to be able to do them so that we don't end up like Mars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.

MAVEN will orbit Mars for a year and will dip down to about 93 miles above the surface at its closest point to take measurements of the lower atmosphere. It will then drift to 3,728 miles away to take ultraviolet images of the entire planet.



Watch the launch here: