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It is a mission set to solve the mystery of what happened to the atmosphere on Mars.

Nasa's Maven spacecraft has given scientists their first glimpse of the upper atmosphere of the red planet, which has baffled them for decades.

It is hoped the craft can explain why the red planet lost most of its atmosphere.

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Unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, taken by Nasa's Maven spacecraft

The first images from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles on Mars.

It has also produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, and yielded a comprehensive map of highly-variable ozone in the atmosphere underlying the coronas.

The spacecraft, which entered Mars' orbit Sept. 21, now is lowering its orbit and testing its instruments. 

Maven was launched to Mars in November 2013, to help solve the mystery of how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere.

'All the instruments are showing data quality that is better than anticipated at this early stage of the mission,' said Bruce Jakosky, Maven Principal Investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

'All instruments have now been turned on -- although not yet fully checked out -- and are functioning nominally. 

'It's turning out to be an easy and straightforward spacecraft to fly, at least so far. 

'It really looks as if we're headed for an exciting science mission.'

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) are streams of high-speed particles blasted from the sun during explosive solar activity like flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). 

Around Earth, SEP storms can damage the sensitive electronics on satellites. 

At Mars, they are thought to be one possible mechanism for driving atmospheric loss.

A solar flare on Sept. 26 produced a CME that was observed by NASA satellites on both sides of the sun. 

Computer models of the CME propagation predicted the disturbance and the accompanying SEPs would reach Mars on Sept. 29. 

MAVEN's Solar Energetic Particle instrument was able to observe the onset of the event that day.

The Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument obtained these false-color images eight hours after the successful completion of Mars orbit insertion. The image shows the planet from an altitude of 36,500 km in three ultraviolet wavelength bands. Blue shows the ultraviolet light from the sun scattered from atomic hydrogen gas in an extended cloud that goes to thousands of kilometers above the planet's surface. Green shows a different wavelength of ultraviolet light that is primarily sunlight reflected off of atomic oxygen, showing the smaller oxygen cloud. Red shows ultraviolet sunlight reflected from the planet's surface; the bright spot in the lower right is light reflected either from polar ice or clouds.

'After traveling through interplanetary space, these energetic particles of mostly protons deposit their energy in the upper atmosphere of Mars,' said SEP instrument lead Davin Larson of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. 

'A SEP event like this typically occurs every couple weeks. 

'Once all the instruments are turned on, we expect to also be able to track the response of the upper atmosphere to them.' 

'With these observations, MAVEN's IUVS has obtained the most complete picture of the extended Martian upper atmosphere ever made,' said Remote Sensing Team member Mike Chaffin of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

'By measuring the extended upper atmosphere of the planet, MAVEN directly probes how these atoms escape to space. 

'The observations support our current understanding that the upper atmosphere of Mars, when compared to Venus and Earth, is only tenuously bound by the Red Planet's weak gravity.' 

There will be about two weeks of additional instrument calibration and testing before Maven starts its primary science mission. 

This includes an end-to-end test to transmit data between NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars and Earth using the MAVEN mission's Electra telecommunications relay. The mission aims to start full science gathering in early to mid-November.