Mars orbital relay infrastructure has been stretched thin for years, relying on spacecraft well past their original operational windows. The potential loss of NASA‘s MAVEN orbiter makes that vulnerability concrete.
Contact with MAVEN was lost on Dec. 6, 2025, when the spacecraft failed to establish communication after emerging from Mars’ far side. Telemetry received two days prior showed normal operations with, according to Louise Prockter, director of NASA‘s planetary science division, “no indications of problems whatsoever.” A fragment of tracking data from the day contact was lost suggests the spacecraft was rotating unexpectedly and had deviated from its planned orbit.
A scheduled solar conjunction — a two-week communication blackout that runs from mid-December through mid-January — meant no contact attempts were made during that window. When that pause ended on Jan. 16, resumed contact efforts produced nothing. NASA‘s Deep Space Network has detected no signal since.
The agency has broadened its search beyond its own assets, enlisting the National Science Foundation‘s Green Bank Observatory and directing the Curiosity rover to scan the sky with its camera. Neither attempt located the spacecraft.
Speaking at a town hall during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas on March 16, Prockter did not declare the mission over. “We haven’t officially said MAVEN is lost yet,” she said. “We’re still looking for it.” At a separate meeting in January, she had described recovery as “very unlikely” after more than a month of silence. NASA has since convened an anomaly review board to evaluate recovery options and assess the spacecraft’s condition, though it remains unclear how long the effort will continue before the mission is formally closed.
Launched in 2013 for a planned one-year mission, MAVEN — Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution — spent twelve years studying how Mars shed its atmosphere over billions of years, helping scientists reconstruct the planet’s transition from a warmer, wetter environment to its current state. It marked its tenth anniversary in September 2024.
Beyond atmospheric science, the orbiter handled roughly 20% of relay communications between Earth and Mars surface missions, including both the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. Its absence has redistributed that load across NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, along with the European Space Agency‘s Trace Gas Orbiter. NASA says it has scheduled additional communication passes and adjusted daily operational plans for both rovers to sustain science activities in the interim. The agency is also evaluating longer-term options to support its Mars relay network, including a potential replacement for MAVEN if the mission is ultimately declared lost.
Photo by Photobank Kiev on Unsplash
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