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CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA’s Maven spacecraft arrived at Mars late on Sunday after a 442 million-mile journey that began nearly a year ago. The robotic explorer fired its brakes and successfully slipped into orbit around the red planet, officials confirmed. Now the real work begins for the $671 million mission, the first dedicated to studying Mars’ upper atmosphere.Flight controllers in Colorado will spend the next six weeks adjusting Maven’s altitude and checking its science instruments, and observing a comet streaking by. Then in early November, Maven will start probing the upper atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft will conduct its observations from orbit; it’s not meant to land.

Scientists believe the Martian atmosphere holds clues as to how Earth’s neighbour went from being warm and wet billions of years ago to cold and dry. That early wet world may have harboured microbial life, a tantalising question yet to be answered.

NASA launched Maven last November from Cape Canaveral, the 10th US mission sent to orbit the red planet. Three earlier ones failed, and until the official word came of success late on Sunday night, the entire team was on edge.

Maven joins three spacecraft already circling Mars, two American and one European. And the traffic jam isn’t over: India’s first interplanetary probe, Maven will. – AP.