Look for a new mission to be picked for Mars.

The folks at the University of Colorado at Boulder are holding a news briefing today to announce the selection of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) by NASA to lead a multimillion dollar mission to study the past climate of Mars - supported by the largest research contract ever awarded to CU-Boulder.

And that bit of news seems to indicate they’ve been selected for a Mars Scout mission. Their entry is the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) - a Mars orbiter that would provide unique, first-of-its kind measurements and address key questions about Mars climate and habitability, as well as improve understanding of dynamic processes in the upper Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.

By the way, this is the selection that got delayed back in December 2007, slipped because of an “organizational conflict of interest” in one of the teams vying for the mission. That problem pushed the Mars Scout from a planned launch in 2011 to a targeted liftoff in 2013, according to a NASA release at the time.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver is building the spacecraft - the same folks that cranked out the Phoenix Mars lander - also a Scout mission.

The MAVEN orbiter is to be a collaborative effort among CU-Boulder, Lockheed Martin, the University of California, Berkeley, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.