NASA has ended its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission after losing contact with the spacecraft in December, bringing to a close more than 11 years of operations in orbit around Mars.
The agency said the spacecraft was last heard from on Dec. 6, after experiencing an unexpected loss of signal when it passed behind Mars. Telemetry received before that pass showed all subsystems operating normally, but NASA’s Deep Space Network did not detect a signal when the spacecraft re-emerged.
NASA convened an anomaly review board in February to evaluate recovery efforts and assess the spacecraft’s likely state. The board determined MAVEN is not recoverable and is no longer able to perform its science and data relay functions, consistent with the mission team’s findings.
According to NASA, analysis of radio signals recorded by the Deep Space Network’s open-loop receivers produced a brief fragment of telemetry indicating the spacecraft was in safe mode and rotating at an unusually high rate after the Mars pass, pointing to a disruption in its orbit trajectory. The review board concluded that the rotation likely drained the spacecraft’s batteries, cutting power to communications and leaving MAVEN in an unrecoverable state.
NASA said the preliminary findings do not identify a root cause for the anomaly, which remains under investigation. The review board’s final report is expected later this year.
NASA has begun the decommissioning process for the mission and said it will follow standard procedures to archive the full mission dataset for science and exploration communities.
“The science MAVEN has given us is key to informing what kind of radiation protection and safety measures we must take before sending humans to Mars,” said Louise Prockter, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The data collected from MAVEN will continue to provide valuable insight into Mars for decades to come.”
Launched in November 2013, MAVEN was the first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution. It studied the planet’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere and how interactions with the Sun and solar wind contribute to atmospheric loss—research NASA says helps explain the Red Planet’s climate history, the fate of liquid water, and questions of habitability.
“The MAVEN mission has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and evolution. This dataset has had a tremendous impact on the field,” said Shannon Curry, the mission’s principal investigator and a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Our science team is exceptionally proud of all of these amazing discoveries.”
NASA said MAVEN’s results included findings on increased atmospheric erosion during solar storms, the discovery of several types of Martian auroras, and the first measurements of atmospheric sputtering at any planet. The spacecraft also supported observations of comet 3I/ATLAS at Mars.
Beyond its science role, MAVEN was part of NASA’s Mars Relay Network, supporting communications between Mars surface missions and Earth. NASA said the mission’s science team produced more than 800 publications, with more planned.
