NASA has but to reestablish contact with its MAVEN Mars spacecraft regardless of ongoing efforts, company officers mentioned Monday (March 16).
NASA misplaced contact with MAVEN on Dec. 6, 2025, after the spacecraft was anticipated to emerge from Mars’ far aspect. Communications acquired two days earlier confirmed the spacecraft was working usually — with “no indications of issues in any respect,” Louise Prockter, director of NASA’s planetary science division, mentioned throughout a city corridor at this 12 months’s Lunar and Planetary Science Convention in The Woodlands, Texas. Nonetheless, evaluation of a fraction of monitoring information from the day contact was misplaced suggests MAVEN was rotating in an sudden method because it emerged from behind Mars and was now not in its deliberate orbit, according to NASA.
Prockter mentioned no sign has been detected by NASA’s Deep Area Community since a planned two-week communication blackout ended on Jan. 16. The scheduled pause in communications, caused by a solar conjunction — when the sun aligns between Earth and Mars — prevents signal interference and avoids sending partial or distorted commands that could trigger unintended behavior in the spacecraft. NASA resumed attempts to contact MAVEN after the solar conjunction ended, but those efforts have so far been unsuccessful, Prockter said. “We haven’t officially said MAVEN is lost yet. We’re still looking for it.”
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NASA has deployed additional assets to locate the spacecraft, including the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory. The agency also attempted to detect MAVEN from the Martian surface by directing the Curiosity rover to point its camera skyward, but no sign of the spacecraft was found.
At a separate assembly in January, Prockter had mentioned restoration was “very unlikely” after the spacecraft had been out of contact for greater than a month. NASA has since convened an anomaly evaluate board to judge potential restoration efforts, assess the spacecraft’s situation and decide any probability of restoration.
Nevertheless it stays unclear how lengthy these efforts will proceed earlier than the mission is formally declared over.
Launched in 2013, MAVEN — quick for Mars Environment and Unstable Evolution — spent a dozen years finding out how Mars misplaced its ambiance, serving to scientists perceive how the planet reworked from a hotter, wetter world into the chilly desert seen at the moment. Initially constructed for a one-year mission, MAVEN marked its 10th anniversary in September 2024.
Past science, MAVEN additionally helps operations by relaying about 20% of communications between Earth and floor missions, together with NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.
“I did wish to take a second simply to rejoice the whole MAVEN staff for all they’ve achieved,” Prockter mentioned throughout Monday’s city corridor, “and for his or her completely heroic efforts throughout the current spacecraft restoration efforts.”
With MAVEN now silent, different spacecraft — together with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and the European Area Company’s Hint Gasoline Orbiter — are taking over a larger share of relay duties. NASA mentioned it has scheduled further communication passes and modified each day plans for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers to take care of science operations.
In parallel, NASA is contemplating choices to assist its growing old Mars relay infrastructure and probably substitute MAVEN whether it is in the end declared misplaced, although Prockter declined to offer additional particulars. A budget reconciliation bill handed final 12 months allocates $700 million for a “high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter,” and Blue Origin has proposed its personal Mars telecom orbiter that it says might launch by 2028.
“We all know that they are not all going to final eternally,” Prockter mentioned. “The company is considering what’s subsequent for Mars.”
