Mars Atmosphere Mission Memento: MAVEN Retired After 11 Years of Groundbreaking Science

NASA has decommissioned MAVEN after an 11-year mission that transformed our understanding of Mars’ atmosphere; after a December 2025 contact loss, a review concluded the spacecraft is not recoverable. MAVEN revealed how solar activity accelerates atmospheric loss, documented planetwide auroras, and produced hundreds of scientific papers while also serving as a high-rate data relay. With other orbiters and a potential future telecom network stepping in to fill the gap, MAVEN’s legacy—exceeding its initial two-year plan—will endure for decades as the orbiter remains in Mars orbit until it naturally reenters.