http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/09/1...w-mars-mission/

... looks promising.

Agreed. Anyone have any more details? The articles I've seen mention eight instruments and an elliptical orbit that gets pretty low indeed. But no mission website or pdf's that I can find so far.

--Nick

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/

Technically it's actually 3 instruments (the fields and particles one has 6 sub-instruments). There's an informative PowerPoint presentation.

--Emily

anyone know if this will have the package to allow MAVEN to act as a relay for future landed missions?

i'm disappointed that the uvs instrument apparently will not address the question of methane in the lower atmosphere, but that was probably an instrument too far for the budget.

This is required for all Mars Scout orbiters, so yes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7618344.stm

What is the duration of the primary mission and what is the likelihood of an extended mission?

1 Earth year primary as I recall. Since this mission is the prime relay for a possible 2016 rover mission, the chances for an extension are probably excellent (although they could keep it going just for relay without collecting and analyzing the data, but so far, NASA hasn't done that kind of thing to my knowledge).