Mars orbiter MAVEN goes silent for good, Nasa ending a decade-long mission

3 min readJun 4, 2026 07:15 PM IST

After more than 11 years studying Mars, NASA has declared the MAVEN spacecraft unrecoverable following a mysterious loss of contact, bringing one of the agency's most successful Mars missions to an end. (Image: Nasa )

Nasa has officially ended the mission of its MAVEN spacecraft after determining that the Mars orbiter is no longer recoverable following an unexpected loss of contact in late 2025.

The spacecraft, formally known as Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), had been orbiting Mars since September 21, 2014. For more than a decade, it studied the red planet’s atmosphere and helped scientists understand how Mars transformed from a warmer, wetter world into the cold and dry planet seen today.

Contact with MAVEN was lost on December 6, 2025, during what appeared to be a routine orbit around Mars. The spacecraft disappeared behind the planet as expected, but when it emerged, Nasa’s Deep Space Network, a global network of radio antennas used to communicate with spacecraft, was unable to detect any signal.

Following the incident, Nasa established an anomaly review board in February 2026 to investigate what had happened. After months of analysis, the agency announced on June 3 that MAVEN could not be recovered and that the mission had officially ended.

Although investigators have not yet identified the exact cause of the failure, preliminary findings suggest the spacecraft experienced an unexpected change in its rotation rate. A brief fragment of telemetry data received after the loss of contact indicated that MAVEN was spinning much faster than normal.

According to Nasa, the excessive rotation likely caused the spacecraft’s batteries to drain. Once power levels dropped too low, MAVEN’s communications system shut down, leaving the spacecraft unable to transmit signals back to Earth.

“The review board concluded that due to this rotation, the batteries on the spacecraft had drained, causing the communications system to lose power and rendering MAVEN in an unrecoverable state,” Nasa said in a statement.

Story continues below this ad

While the spacecraft is no longer operational, its scientific legacy remains significant. MAVEN provided the first direct evidence of atmospheric “sputtering”, a process in which charged particles from the Sun strip away gases from Mars’ upper atmosphere. Scientists believe this mechanism played a major role in the planet’s long-term atmospheric loss.

The spacecraft also detected multiple types of Martian auroras, observed how the planet’s magnetic environment changes during solar activity, and helped researchers better understand the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.

Earlier this year, MAVEN data even contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon, highlighting the continuing scientific value of the mission’s archive.

Nasa scientists say the vast dataset collected over the mission’s 11 years will continue to support Mars research for years to come, even though the spacecraft has fallen silent.

© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd

Tags:

NASA