LeVar Burton is best-known for his lead acting roles in Reading Rainbow and Star Trek. But this week, he stepped up onto a whole new kind of stage to to be an advocate for Mars research. NASA released a live video public-service announcement in which Burton presented, in his uniquely warm and engaging persona, the context and expectations for the space agency’s upcoming MAVEN mission to Mars.

MAVEN—short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution missioN—is a robotic explorer that NASA will launch Monday and send to Mars with the mission of studying the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and the interactions between the air particles and the incoming solar radiation and solar wind. -mission/#ixzz2l0Ke45kV