NASA’s MAVEN Mars Orbiter Goes Silent, Likely Lost to Contact

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter, which has studied Mars’ upper atmosphere for over a decade, went offline in December. NASA later acknowledged MAVEN was rotating unexpectedly and is very unlikely to be recovered, though Mars’s solar conjunction could offer another contact window. In the meantime, three other spacecraft can relay data to Earth, and NASA continues root-cause analyses while exploring future options such as a revived Mars Telecommunications Orbiter.