NASA Decommissions 11-Year MAVEN Mission After Mars Orbiter Becomes Unrecoverable
Updated
Updated · NASA · Jun 3
NASA Decommissions 11-Year MAVEN Mission After Mars Orbiter Becomes Unrecoverable
2 articles · Updated · NASA · Jun 3
Summary
More than 11 years after arriving at Mars, MAVEN has been declared unrecoverable and is now being formally decommissioned after NASA lost contact with the spacecraft on Dec. 6.
Telemetry fragments showed MAVEN emerged from behind Mars in safe mode and spinning unusually fast; the review board said that rotation drained its batteries, cut power to communications and ended any chance of recovery.
NASA said all subsystems had appeared normal before the signal loss, and the anomaly’s root cause is still under investigation, with a final review report due later this year.
Launched in 2013, MAVEN far outlasted its 1-year prime mission, produced more than 800 publications and helped reveal how solar storms, auroras, sputtering and dust storms drove Mars' atmospheric loss.
The orbiter also served as a key Mars Relay Network asset for rover communications, while NASA said its archived dataset will continue supporting Mars science and future human mission planning.
After 11 years of success, what sent NASA's MAVEN spacecraft into an unrecoverable death spiral around Mars?
With MAVEN gone, how will NASA protect future astronauts from Mars' atmosphere-stripping radiation and newly discovered space weather effects?
MAVEN found alien comet water unlike our own. What does this reveal about life's origins in other star systems?
MAVEN Lost After 11 Years: Scientific Legacy, Data Relay Crisis, and the Future of Mars Exploration
Overview
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, after more than 11 years of groundbreaking science at Mars, experienced an unexpected loss of signal on December 6, 2025, shortly after passing behind the Red Planet. This sudden loss of contact triggered an immediate investigation, with NASA resuming efforts to re-establish communication after a solar conjunction. The MAVEN team is carefully analyzing recovered data from a radio science campaign to build a timeline and identify the root cause of the anomaly. To ensure a thorough understanding, NASA is assembling a formal anomaly review board to investigate all available data and determine why contact was lost.