NASA Declares MAVEN, Its Mars Atmosphere Orbiter, Dead
MAVEN spent 11 years studying Mars' lost atmosphere before an unexpected rotation drained its batteries and cut contact with NASA, officials said.
- On Wednesday, NASA officially announced the end of the MAVEN mission after 11 years orbiting Mars, following the spacecraft's loss of communication in December 2025 due to unexpected rotation.
- Project manager Mike Moreau of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said the spacecraft is "not recoverable" after it began spinning at 2.7 revolutions per minute, draining batteries and cutting power to communications.
- MAVEN provided evidence explaining why Mars evolved from a warm, wet environment to a cold, dry planet, while investigating how solar winds strip away atmospheric gases at a rate of about 100 grams per second.
- NASA Mars Exploration Program director Tiffany Morgan said MAVEN was a "key component" of the Mars Relay Network, but the system remains resilient enough to accommodate the loss of the spacecraft.
- Planetary scientist Briony Horgan warned that "Our Mars infrastructure is growing increasingly more fragile every year," as surface missions now rely solely on Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter despite budget threats.
12 Articles
12 Articles
NASA Ends Mars Mission 6 Months After Losing Communication With Spacecraft
NASA Ends Mars Mission 6 Months After Losing Communication With Spacecraft Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times, After more than a decade of service, unlocking treasure troves of insights into Mars's atmosphere, NASA announced on June 3 that its MAVEN mission has come to an end after a still unknown anomaly threw the spacecraft off course and drained its battery. NASA’s MAVEN mission is observing the upper atmosphere of Mars to help unde…
NASA pronounces Mars orbiter MAVEN dead
The update nobody wanted to hear After more than a decade in space, a vital Mars satellite suddenly went dark in December. NASA has spent the last six months trying to reestablish contact with the orbiter, but now, the agency has finally thrown in the towel. NASA formally ended the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission on Wednesday, explaining that the spacecraft is "not recoverable" and is "no longer capable of performing its s…
Despite the sad ending, the probe completed its tasks after more than 10 years. NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which explored Mars for 11 years, finally disappeared after entering the opposite side of the planet. The engineers found that the probe began to rotate randomly, completely discharged the batteries and would no longer be able to communicate. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to Ars Technica. More interesting: Nuclear power and A…
Slog AM: Trump’s Cabinet Is Full of Suckups, NASA Says Goodbye to Mars Orbiter, Workers at Walrus and the Carpenter Authorize a Strike
Good Morning! It’s still spring in Seattle, so we have another partly cloudy, 60-something degree day ahead of us. It’s farmer’s market weather. It’s weather to take your (or someone else’s) dog on a long, breezy walk. Smoke season comes for us all eventually, so just get outside. But first, the news. Kissing the Ring: In a new analysis, the New York Times reviewed over a dozen hours of cabinet meeting footage to analyze how Trump’s administra…
NASA announced the end of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission after losing communication with the probe. The decision was announced in a teleconference held on June 3, 2026, where the agency reported that the probe could no longer perform scientific operations. End of the MAVEN mission. MAVEN operated in orbit around Mars for 11 years, exceeding its original one-year mission by 10 years. The loss of communication occurred …
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