On Monday, NASA will prepare to add another spacecraft into its Mars Exploration Program. According to a report from Space.com, NASA’s latest Mars exploration space probe has been cleared for launch and will see liftoff from the Florida-based Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at approximately 1:28 p.m. EST on the afternoon of November 18.

The spacecraft, codenamed MAVEN (an acronym of sorts for the “Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution” probe) will be launched into space on the back of a NASA Atlas 5 rocket. After the crafts have made it out of Earth’s atmosphere, they will set a course toward Mars – a voyage that will take 10 months of travel time through deep space frontiers. Once MAVEN reaches Mars, it will join numerous other probes from NASA’s Mars Exploration Program in studying different facets of the mysterious Red Planet.

So what is MAVEN’s assignment? Essentially, the probe will be studying Mars in order to determine how and why the planet lost its atmosphere thousands of years ago. Since the atmospheric disappearance is expected to be behind the planet’s major climate shift – from what Space.com calls “a warm and wet world” to a “cold, dry place” – the MAVEN probe will be working to figure out what processes may have led to Mars’ current inhospitable environment. Depending on the probe’s findings, MAVEN could be the first step Earth scientists need to figure out how Mars might one day become a livable planet, or might even give some indication of similar climate change processes Earth may face in the future.

MAVEN won’t be the only NASA spacecraft out there studying Mars, however. Currently, the space agency has a number of exploratory craft on or around the planet, including rovers like Curiosity – which is working to determine whether or not Mars ever had the ability to support microbial life – and orbiters such as Odyssey – which has been out in space since 2001, mapping the chemicals and minerals making up Mars’ surface, and locating the first traces of water ice on the planet.

Through its missions over the past decade or so, NASA has worked hard to elucidate the mysteries of Mars, looking at what makes it similar to Earth and at what makes it different. The MAVEN probe is the logical next step in that narrative.

Interested in watching the MAVEN probe space launch for yourself? Tune into Space.com tomorrow, where the launch will be broadcast for all to see.