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<\/p>\nFollowing a six-month battle to regain communication with its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft around Mars, NASA announced the conclusion of the MAVEN mission on June 3rd. The mission, which launched to the red planet in 2013, studied the Martian atmosphere and its evolution for 11 years \u2014 over a decade longer than initially expected.<\/p>\n
Though MAVEN is no longer making new measurements at Mars, the data it collected remains highly valuable for planetary scientists and continues to be analyzed. One team of scientists recently used MAVEN data to discover an atmospheric effect in Mars\u2019 atmosphere that deflects incoming solar wind in the absence of a magnetosphere.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
NASA concludes MAVEN\u2019s 11-year mission at Mars<\/p>\n
MAVEN launched to Mars in November 2013 atop an Atlas V rocket, entered orbit in September 2014, and officially began scientific observations in November 2014. Selected in 2008 as the second mission under NASA\u2019s Mars Scout Program, MAVEN featured a suite of eight scientific instruments designed to probe the Martian atmosphere and study the loss of its gases over time. MAVEN was the first NASA mission to conduct in-depth studies into the history and evolution of the red planet\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
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MAVEN launches to Mars atop an Atlas V. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n
At the time of its launch, MAVEN\u2019s primary mission was expected to last two years, with one year dedicated to scientific operations in orbit around Mars. Due to the good health of the spacecraft and the quality of the data it was returning, MAVEN\u2019s science phase was extended several times, first from June 2015 through September 2016, and then again from October 2016 through September 2018.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, by the end of its mission, MAVEN had operated at Mars for 10 years longer than initially planned. During this time, it continued to collect atmospheric measurements and support communications between Earth and other Martian spacecraft \u2014 most notably NASA\u2019s Curiosity<\/em> and Perseverance<\/em> rovers.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network (DSN) lost contact with MAVEN on Dec. 6, 2025. The DSN is a worldwide network of large radio antennas that send and receive signals from NASA\u2019s fleet of spacecraft throughout the solar system. When contact was lost, the satellite had been operating in a 4,500 km by 130 km orbit around Mars since 2019, completing approximately 6.6 orbits per day. Normally, when MAVEN\u2019s orbit takes it behind Mars, teams briefly lose contact with the spacecraft until it emerges and reestablishes contact with the DSN. However, on Dec. 6, the DSN received no signals from the craft after it orbited behind Mars.<\/p>\n (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Small amounts of data from the spacecraft were recovered after the loss of signal, indicating that MAVEN had entered safe mode due to an unexpectedly high spin rate, leading teams to believe its orbit had been disrupted. Interestingly, before passing behind Mars, MAVEN telemetry showed that all spacecraft systems were functioning nominally. NASA convened an anomaly review board in February to assess potential recovery efforts and the probable state of the Mars orbiter.<\/p>\n The review board concluded that the spacecraft\u2019s batteries had likely been drained by the rotation, leaving MAVEN without power and unable to communicate with Earth, meaning the spacecraft cannot be recovered \u2014 ending its mission. However, the cause of the anomaly remains unknown, and the review board is expected to continue its investigations and provide results in a final report later this year. In the meantime, NASA will start the official decommissioning procedures for MAVEN and its team of scientists, and begin archiving the mission\u2019s entire dataset for use in future studies of Mars\u2019 atmosphere.<\/p>\n