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MAVEN Spacecraft Departs for Mars with 1,100 Haikus

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter launched yesterday, bringing with it a DVD containing over 1,100 hiakus. 
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In a previous post, we wrote about how NASA was accepting haikus from anyone on Earth to be included on the MAVEN mission. Sure enough, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter launched yesterday, bringing with it a DVD containing over 1,100 hiakus, those poems that received at least two votes. There were 12,000 submissions.

Of course, delivering poetry to Mars is not the primary focus of this mission. MAVEN is on a 10-month journey to explore the Red Planet’s climate history.

See MAVEN’s liftoff in the video below.

Watch here:

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