Nov 19, 2013 10:11 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Headed for Mars to investigate what happened to the atmosphere, NASA's MAVEN robotic orbiter successfully launched Monday and is en route to the Red Planet.

According to the Associated Press, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) began it journey on the back of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The craft is expected to arrive at Mars next fall and will travel a distance totaling 440 million miles.

About 10,000 appeared at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to watch the launch. A group from the University of Colorado - Boulder, the project's manager, accounted for a couple thousand.

"We're just excited right now," said the university's Bruce Jakosky, principal scientist for Maven, "and hoping for the best."

This is NASA's 21st trip to Mars, but the first with the sole intention of studying the planet's upper atmosphere. The MAVEN will ascend to the high reaches of the atmosphere and also dip to examine the lower part.

The mission is part of the long-standing mystery as to whether or not Mars once hosted life. With a rover on the ground and an orbiter in the sky both beaming information and observations back to Earth, scientists could have answers.

"We don't have that answer yet, and that's all part of our quest for trying to answer, 'Are we alone in the universe?' in a much broader sense," John Grunsfeld, NASA's science mission director, told the AP.

Just hours after the launch, MAVEN Project Manager David Mitchell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, officially confirmed the rocket had began the orbiter's journey.

"We're currently about 14,000 miles away from Earth and heading out to the Red Planet right now," he said in a press release immediately following the launch.

Next, MAVEN will detach from the rocket and begin its journey to Mars. But Monday, it took its all-important first step forward.

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