Public voting ends today: What is the MAVEN art contest? Design artwork about Mars using our sample file. Limit one design per person. Who chooses the winning art? You do! The contest is open to public voting on this site. Tell your friends and family to vote for your design! (Each person can vote once per design.) Is there a prize for winning? Your art will be used on the DVD label that will fly to Mars on the MAVEN spacecraft. It will also be saved on the DVD.

Building on the success of Curiosity's Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency's commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation's scientific and human exploration objectives. "The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s." The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA's 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.

The dramatic touchdown in August of the Mars rover Curiosity set the bar high for the next mission to Mars. At Wright State University, Research Professor Jane L. Fox, Ph.D., has her fingers crossed. The Department of Physics professor is a member of the science team for Mars MAVEN, next in line for a ride to the Red Planet. The unmanned craft is scheduled to blast off in late November 2013 and arrive in September 2014.

NASA has approved a new unmanned mission to Mars, one aimed at explaining exactly how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere. A spacecraft is scheduled to launch in late 2013 and begin orbiting around Mars about 10 months later for a yearlong study. Scientists suspect that the sun has been stealing off Martian air for eons, and they expect the new probe to put that theory to the test. NASA has given the $438 million project, which was first proposed in 2008, a heady name: the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission. Scientists are calling it "Maven" for short. "Maven will examine all known ways the sun is currently swiping the Martian atmosphere, and may discover new ones as well," said Joseph Grebowsky, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a statement.