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Over billions of years, streams of charged particles from the sun stripped away much of Mars' atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)

Shannon Curry remembers the first time she saw the moon up close.

She was an undergraduate at Tufts University doing research in Oracle, Arizona, and got the chance to see the moon through a high-powered telescope. Curry had long been interested in space. But now, she could see the ridges of individual craters on the lunar surface in startling detail, making the moon real for her in a way it hadn’t been before.

“I think I hogged the telescope for 20 minutes,” said Curry, today a professor whose research is out of the (LASP) at the �鶹��Ѱ�����. “I was almost in tears.”

Now, Curry, who joined the �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder faculty in 2024, is hoping to bring those same kinds of moments of discovery to a new generation of scientists.

Shannon Curry

MAVEN detected a series of auroras, in purple, above Mars during the solar storms of May 2024. (Credit: NASA/University of Colorado/LASP)

In 2022, NASA named Curry the new principal investigator for the (MAVEN) mission—at 39 she was the youngest person to lead a planetary science mission of this scale in the space agency’s history.

The MAVEN spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2014 to solve a long-running mystery: Where did the planet’s atmosphere go? Today, Mars harbors only a wispy atmosphere, roughly 100 times thinner than the gases around Earth.

Curry said that space missions like MAVEN can help humans answer important questions about our place in the universe. The spacecraft is also laying important groundwork that could one day keep astronauts safe as they explore the surface of Mars. She sees MAVEN as a tool for training students and early-career scientists who will make up the “Artemis generation” in how to manage a complex mission in space—a skill that may be dying out in the United States.

In an era when the future of NASA funding is uncertain, Curry believes that humanity must continue to look to the stars for inspiration.

“Are there other species like us? Are there other planets like us?” said Curry, an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “Understanding other atmospheres is a fundamental piece of understanding our own origins.”

Lottery ticket

For Curry, exploring the story of other planets also means exploring Earth’s own story.

Three billion years ago, Mars looked a lot like our planet. Precipitation in the form of snow or rain fell from the sky, feeding a vast network of channels that emptied into massive lakes. Today, that water has mostly disappeared. Venus, meanwhile, also started off a lot like Earth. Today, it’s choked by thick clouds of carbon dioxide, and temperatures at the surface hit 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The planetary scientist has long wanted to know why the three worlds went down very different paths.

“You can think of Earth as this super lotto ticket. We have this incredible set of conditions that have been critical for life,” Curry said. “We’re not quite sure why Mars and Venus, which formed at the same time with similar atmospheres, went in totally different directions.”

In Mars’ case, several years of MAVEN data revealed that streams of charged particles coming from the sun had slowly stripped away the gases around the planet—leaving it with an atmosphere too thin to maintain water at the surface.

Those findings, however, have left scientists with more questions than answers, Curry said.

Violet Shirley, for example, began working with Curry on the MAVEN mission when she was an undergraduate student at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder studying interdisciplinary astronomy. Shirley uses several instruments on the spacecraft to look not at Mars, but at the sun. In particular, she’s studying how the sun ejects massive storms, known as coronal mass ejections, deep into space.

Her research matters a lot for humanity’s dreams of one day visiting Mars.

In May 2024, the sun let loose one of the largest coronal mass ejections that scientists had seen in decades, which collided directly with Mars’ atmosphere several days later. If any humans had been standing on the planet’s surface at the time, they would have been hit by —a potentially harmful dose.

To protect future Mars astronauts, Shirley said, scientists need to understand how the planet’s thin atmosphere reacts to the sun’s outbursts.

“If we’re going to be sending people to Mars, and there’s a solar storm, space agencies will need to know whether to get those astronauts off the surface or get so far underground that it won’t hurt them,” said Shirley, who graduated in May 2025.

Artist's depiction of the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars. (Credit: NASA)

Breath of fresh air

Shirley’s research also shows what budding scientists can gain from working on real space missions.

MAVEN isn’t a simple apparatus. The spacecraft measures more than 11-feet-tall and includes nine scientific instruments. Maneuvering the spacecraft, analyzing its data and working through obstacles when they arise requires juggling priorities across the country and globe. Curry worries, however, that the skills needed to successfully operate such missions could be disappearing in the United States.

“We have this incredible wealth of knowledge in planetary science, but there's a generational gap,” Curry said. “We haven't really invested in making sure we transfer that knowledge to the next generation.”

Violet Shirley presents her MAVEN findings at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder's 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. (Credit: Violet Shirley)

She’s using her time as MAVEN’s lead scientist to pass on that knowledge to early-career researchers. Her goal dovetails with LASP’s long-running efforts to give students at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder hands-on experience with space missions—skills that come in handy when students apply for jobs at NASA, universities or private aerospace companies.

Those students include Rhys Hanson. He’s an undergraduate in his third year at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder studying astrophysics and aerospace engineering sciences. Hanson helps to develop computer simulations, or models, that predict conditions in Mars’ upper atmosphere—something like weather forecasts for the Red Planet. NASA could one day use these kinds of forecasts to keep satellites in orbit around Mars for longer.

“What’s really interesting to me is that planetary atmospheres can be so unique,” Hanson said. “Every planetary atmosphere in our solar system is different from every other atmosphere. Earth has this mix of gases that we can breathe, but Venus is an awful wasteland. Some moons have methane atmospheres.”

Looking to the stars

The United States’ long legacy in exploring the fringes of space, however, is under threat today, Curry said.

In its proposed budget for 2026, the White House recommended steep cuts to NASA, and proposed canceling funding for the MAVEN mission, among several others, entirely.

If implemented, these proposals could have severe impacts on the economy. Federal funding fuels the nation’s aerospace and defense industry, which employs around 2.2 million people. At LASP alone, NASA funding employs around 250 undergraduate and 100 graduate students every year.

Curry also sees space exploration as an important part of the American identity—one that has brought together people from different backgrounds for generations. She hopes that young people will continue to have the chance for decades to come to peer through telescopes and dream of what’s possible.

“On a fundamental level, exploration has been the thing that has set humanity apart in so many ways and can also unite us in so many ways—we can harness our intellectual capacity and do things no one ever thought possible when we do it together,” Curry said.